#we need more pimple representation in media

[rmtzcoconut]

Slight redesign

[strawberella]

Task 1. Module 4: Take a Selfie

Do your selfies reflect or mirror who you really are? Why or why not ?

No it does not. It is only a copy of what I look like from the outside, like physically but not my whole being. If one of my friends or just someone who knows me sees this selfie they would be immediately be reminded of me because this photo reflects my physical appearance, specifically my face. If I posted those selfies I took in any of my social media accounts, my family or my friends would comment and share their thoughts about what I look like in my photo. It could be either be a negative or positive feedback since I can't control what and how they think about my photo. Yes, the photo is me but not who I am.  The totality of my being cannot be captured by a mere photograph. It may however capture some aspects of myself but not everything because it is just a copied version of myself and it isn't the real me. The photo I took is a distorted version of me since I have used several filters to make it look good, if I took the filter off I wouldn't even have the guts to post it. Having to post my selfies means I am going to war and my ultimate weapon are the filters so I am ready to accept any objective opinions about my face. Even if the word itself says "self-ies" which refers to your self-portrait photograph I still think that this isn't enough to say that it reflects who I really am. Photographs are stationary, it is just there to capture a moment of what you are doing and not you whole life story.

What do you do to make your selfies more appealing/pleasing/attractive?

As a sociology student, I know for a fact that everything is just a social construct but then I still comply with societal standards so that I would not be considered as "other" or deviant. This standards wasn't a big deal to me back when I was in elementary, high school and senior high school since I believe that I am in line with the beauty standards set by the society. Even If I don't have a fair skin I still managed to look appealing since I had a smooth skin and my pimples just appears once in a blue moon and if they did so, it would be in a place that is unnoticeable and they would just be very small in size. However, when I entered college and the stress and lack of sleep really took a toll on my skin and I started to have pimples on my face and my self-esteem spiraled downwards. To be able to make myself better and make myself look "appealing" again, I joined the trend of using filters and editing the selfies I take in order to look more presentable and likable. I have unconsciously and consciously succumbed to the standard set upon by society and I hate it.  The angle and the lighting also becomes a factor since my face isn't symmetrical I must find the right position to take a selfie. But who made these standards? Those who are in the position to make meanings and those who have the authority to associate anything to something. We as a society have collectively agreed upon these set of standards so it has now became the norm, in order to maintain their social supremacy and the status quo we were all made to believe that this is what it should be.

Would you consider selfies a fair representation of yourself? Why or why not?

I am going to say a hard no for this one because how I am as a person and my selfies doesn't really match with each other. It's like whenever I take a selfie I make this another part of me that I think would suit the taste of anyone. I would often portray myself as cute or bubbly in my pictures when in reality I am very far from being cute and I am no fun at all. Just like any other netizen I have internalized the double standards so much that I became so aware of what I post and what not to post. The screen of my phone has offered me a protective bubble to be able to literally filter out the bad side of myself to be able to show all the butterflies and rainbows part of me. These selfies represent me in a way since it is my face but I cannot directly say that its is a fair representation of me. Most of the camera apps in smart phones nowadays has a built in filter feature, and this in a way encourages us to use them even if we don't really need it. I think when it comes to selfies two o of the three representation theories can be used to examine it. Intentional because I have my own agenda as to why I posted that selfie and that is to earn compliments and validation. Furthermore, it can we can also use constructionist since my intentions of posting the photo can be interpreted in various ways by the people who may be able to see them, they can express their perspectives by using language or emoticons.

[ljelliott]

Blog 7: Visual Communities & Social Imaging

There was song written about it. It made it into the Oxford Dictionary in 2013. It killed more people in 2015 than Sharks. They occur approximately 93 million times a day. ....THE SELFIE!

The word, quite self-explanatory, is best described as ‘an arm’s length mobile phone camera self-portrait shared via social media’ (Swinburne. 2018). Whilst dating back to the early 80’s, the craze of the selfie really hit in society in 2002 and today is a global phenomenon. Most people would experience it on a daily basis. Whether it is as you scroll through your newsfeed, you’re a user of Snapchat, you’re sitting on the bus or reading a trashy news magazine.

Personally, I’m not a big fan – I feel it draws attention both in the capturing and the sharing. That’s just me though, maybe I’m not good at finding the right angle or pulling the right facial expression. Back in 2010/2011 I remember I posted a status on Facebook, and that took courage and it was only text, not a selfie. I posted “Snapchat, making it totally acceptable for people to take selfies”. It popped up on my on this day a couple of months ago and that’s why I remember it – but I ask myself why did I think their needed to be a reason to take a selfie, if that’s what people like doing, if that’s how they like to communicate and share themselves and are not impacting others, then go for it. These days with the concept and features on Snapchat, selfies aren’t always about reflecting your attractiveness. “Snapchat isn’t about capturing the traditional Kodak moment. It is about communicating with a full range of human emotion – not just what appears to be pretty or perfect’ (Bernazzani. 2017). In 2015 Snapchat added lenses, also known as filters, encouraging the self-facing camera (SELFIE ALERT!) to change and add to their look. From puppy ears, face swap, rainbow tongues and more. For me this feature played a crucial part in the rise and establishment of selfies. It offered a different meaning and purpose, with a more fun and silly approach. In today’s society whilst the selfie is definitely still around to promote your latest hair do, outfit or mission out on Saturday night, a lot of people and particularly celebrities are using them to show themselves for who they really are. We all wake up with bed, have pimples or laze around in track pants and a for a while and for some people, they use the selfie culture to display who they wish/want they could be, a false representation, rather than who they really are. We don’t always look as good as our last Instagram post!

(Instagram. 2015)

Reference:

Bernazzani. Sophia, 2017, ‘A Brief History of Snpachat’, HubSpot – Marketing, accessed February 2018, available from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/history-of-snapchat

Swinburne Online, 2018, ‘Week 9: Visual Communities and Social Imaging’, Digital Communities – Swinburne Online, accessed February 2018, available from https://swinburneonline.instructure.com/courses/77/pages/9-dot-3-networked-visuality?module_item_id=16377

[olmopress]

Episode I: Manovich Strikes Back!

week 10: Vincent Miller, “Key Elements of Digital Media” / Lev Manovich, “The Language of New Media”, Principles of New Media: 1. Numerical Representation, 3. Automation

When by my solitary hearth I sit, When no fair dreams before my “mind’s eye” flit, And the bare heath of life presents no bloom; Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed, And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head.

The past two weeks in this class have been dark as hell. The internet is a scary place dominated by Beelzebub himself, and I feel we’re all in desperate need of some hope. So I thought: why not bless you all whit some IAMBIC PENTAMETERS™ by our golden boy John Keats? Right. Here you can find the complete poem.

Here’s a recent photograph of Mark Zuckerberg with make up off.

Here’s him when his internal automation software runs smoothly.

But now

IT’S MANOVICH TIME

Just like last time I am kind of ignoring Miller because, well, it just retells Manovich so why bother with him. Except that there’s something so funny he writes about the networked nature of digital media.

OK so Miller writes:

“The decentralisation of media production means that, with many more producers and sources of information, there is a greatly enlarged element of choice when consuming digital media. (15)

Really, V?

Mr. Miller, the 2019 internet disproves your claims. Unless we wanna include the weirdos and sickos who populate the Deep/Dark web, but we’re not going that way because I already have enough anxiety with the mainstream evil and I don’t wanna get even more depressed about this terrible world.

SO

Principles of New Media. Today was quite easy, frankly. The first principle is

NUMERICAL REPRESENTATION

which, to put it bluntly, means that digital media works through binary code. That is, any digital object is actually a mathematical object, a compound of numbers. Or, if you want to be more Manovichean, a discrete object. That is, an object which is not continuous. That is, an object that can be divided and observed into little packets. Quantified. Like photons in quantum mechanics. Is this paragraph becoming annoying?

WELL WHO CARES; MY BLOG, MY STILE. IT’S DIGITIZATION OF LANGUAGE, YOU HEATHEN

Interesting.

OK so whenever we have grasped the fact that all digital media is the expression of some weird combination of numbers we can also say that this implies the possibility of algorithmic manipulation. Which of course means that those numbers can be changed and moved around pretty much the way we want. This so frickin great because it means you can make your pimples disappear on photoshop, but also frickin terrifying because it makes the manipulation of “reality” sooooo much easier that it doesn’t even require much skill anymore. And so you can be tricked into believing that you’re favorite influencer is a real person when, bè, he/she/it is in fact the result of algorithmic manipulation.

SO MUCH FOR A STABLE REALITY

Manovich also likes a lot to write about how continuous objects are turned into discrete ones through digitization, of which he says the most important/interesting aspect is that of quantification. And sooooooo he then goes on to tell you how the structuralist gang already said that LaNgUaGe Is AlWaYs QuAnTiFiEd and discrete because bla bla bla

MAYBE TRUE FOR WESTERN LANGUAGE BUT I WOULDN’T BE SO SURE ABOUT LIKE CHINESE OR JAPANESE OR SOME OTHER EXOTIC LANGUAGE

YOU EURO-CENTRIC UNIVERSALIST IMPERIALISTS

The last thing I wanted to say about PRINCIPLE NUMBER ONE is that that thing about post-industrial individual customization seems very interesting. We need more time to think about it.

BUT IT’S TIME FOR PRINCIPLE THREE AUTOMATION

Look, this word is being used so much lately that I am really starting to be pissed off. Also because it is that weirdo of Andrew Yang who makes it even more mainstream through his ridiculous 2020 campaign… I don’t know I am kinda sick of automation.

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OK he’s fun. But also kind of a jerk.

But we have to talk about it so let’s start. Manovich says that automation partially removes human intentionality in the creative process, which is in itself an interesting way to look at it instead of the disgustingly dominant ideology of the:

IT MAKES THINGS EASIER

Yeah. Fuck easy, then.

Anyways, Mano-Mano distinguishes two distinct levels of automation

1. Low-level automation: the silly, simple, automatic one. The one that, like, follows blindly algorithms and patterns and responds consequently. Like the software that suggests me knew artists and album on Apple Music.

And you can see this kind of automation SUCKS SHIT because I already have both the legendary Enter The Wu-Tang and that first J. Cole album in my library. Also you really gotta be damn kidding me if you dare putting an “If” before “you like Frank Ocean.”

THERE ARE NO IFs

IT IS AN AXIOM

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OK I am calming down.

2. High-level automation: this is the saucy one. The robots-are-going-to-take-over-us-and-finally-end-capitalism-because-they-know-better kind. High level automation is the one that attempts to extrapolate meaning out of objects. It is, essentially AI. Or an automation that aims to reproduce the processes through the human mind makes sense of the world.

COOL

BUT ALSO HORRIBLY DANGEROUS IF PUT IN THE HANDS OF THE WRONG PEOPLE

Of course Manovich makes the example of videogame AI. And, you know what, this example still works today, because it is the most developed and visible kind of AI.

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Sometimes it doesn’t really work as well as we would like it to, though.

The last bit of Manovich is about the overabundance of information in the digital age and the way in which we try to use automation to help us navigate the IMMENSE dump that internet databases are. This is called media access, and let me tell you something: you may have the best software EVER to search around, but if:

1. You are stupid 2. Databases are put together and compiled in equally idiotic ways

You still won’t find what you’re looking for

:)

Still believe automation is going to solve all of our problems?

:)

You suck shit too, then.

:)

OK SORRY THAT WAS SAVAGE

Let me reconcile with automation enthusiasts with some pics and music. If Manovich’s book had an OST, it would sound pretty much like this, I think:

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And it should have these kind of illustrations I found on the internet

وداعا !

Image Sources: wikipedia, People, Twitter

[uchiha-sensei]

Listen, I’m tired.

I’m so fucking tired. Generally I ignore fandom rant and hate wars, but this is getting ridiculous. And out of hand. 

I’m a shadowhunter fan. I’m also a skam fan.  One don’t exclude the other and I know about a bunch of other people who are the same. So let’s begin like this. 

Both evak and malec are gonna compete against each other on E!Online Pool. That’s great, two gay couple had come so close, and were up against so many other straight/not so healthy couples! It’ll bring attention to both shows and both deserve it. 

What is not so great is the fucking drama you guys are doing. 

You know, I’m mostly addressing the shadowhunters fandom here because you guys are the most ridiculous. I’ve seen serious shadowhunters blogs, blogs I liked and admired and considered, rant and talk like fucking 12 year old child. You use excuses like “the show is all white!” and talk about racism when you know, or at last should know if you’re criticizing it, it’s NOT an american show. It doesn’t have ANY RESPONSABILITY to represent you or your country, they only have the responsibility to represent THEIR OWN COUNTRY, Norway. It’s one of the whitest countries in the fucking world, we all know that. If you don’t like it, that’s your problem. But this doesn’t mean at all they are racist. 

Saying that let’s pass to the other topic, representation. Yes, Shadowhunters have great representation. I’m always proud to think their cast has probably more poc people than white. They bring on important issues, like racism, (not that frequently tho) in the middle of their plot. That’s great. That’s awesome. I love that. But it doesn’t mean Skam doesn’t have their own representation, their own issues being addressed. 

In fact, as matter of “numbers”, Skam has addressed more important issues than Shadowhunters. Important issues like betrayal, like self acceptance, like eating disorders, like cheating, like sexuality and prejudice, like mental illness (and I’m not only talking about bipolarity, but anxiety and depression), like religion, like Islam. All very directly, all very distinctive. They had talked about pansexuality and bisexuality, something Shadowhunters have yet to bring up. They had more than just one gay or bi character. THEY HAVE REPRESENTATION. Now, don’t come to me and say ‘ah but there was this and that “”””””””implied”””””””” on shadowhunters characters’, we all know your implied doesn’t mean jack shit. People won’t believe it if it’s not obvious or intentional, so let’s put your “””””””””implied”””””””” apart. 

You all have to accept the other show, no matter which, covers things your doesn’t.  

Now, I’m not saying you have to like Skam. You don’t have to like Shadowhunters either. But both of you need to stop going on social media, WHERE YOUR NASTY COMMENTS ARE PUBLIC AND OUT TO THE CAST OF BOTH SHOWS, and talking shit about people appearance and traits. The Skam cast are mostly made of teenagers. TEENAGERS LIKE 17 YEAR OLD TEENAGERS. I’ve seen people making fun of teeth gaps, of pimples, of skin color and talent as if you yourself don’t have any of them, as if you yourself was perfect. As if you all don’t reblog a ton of shit saying we should respect each other and not care so much about appearances. You all fucking hypocrites. You’re all fucking childish. 

STOP THAT SHIT. 

Yes, both fandoms are competing. It doesn’t mean you have to be nasty. It doesn’t mean you have to act like a child. It doesn’t mean you have to feel so overprotective or angry. And for fuck sake, it doesn’t mean you should disrespect the other show cast. STOP. 

[dorcasrempel]

MIT celebrates 50th anniversary of historic moon landing

On Sept. 12, 1962, in a speech given in Houston to pump up support for NASA’s Apollo program, President John F. Kennedy shook a stadium crowd with the now-famous quote: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

As he delivered these lines, engineers in MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory were already taking up the president’s challenge. One year earlier, NASA had awarded MIT the first major contract of the Apollo program, charging the Instrumentation Lab with developing the spacecraft’s guidance, navigation, and control systems that would shepherd astronauts Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong to the moon and back.

On July 20, 1969, the hard work of thousands paid off, as Apollo 11 touched down on the lunar surface, safely delivering Armstrong and Aldrin ScD ’63 as the first people to land on the moon.

On Wednesday, MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) celebrated the 50th anniversary of this historic event with the daylong symposium “Apollo 50+50,” featuring former astronauts, engineers, and NASA adminstrators who examined the legacy of the Apollo program, and MIT faculty, students, industry leaders, and alumni who envisioned what human space exploration might look like in the next 50 years.

In welcoming a large audience to Kresge Auditorium, some of whom sported NASA regalia for the occasion, Daniel Hastings, head of AeroAstro, said of today’s prospects for space exploration: “It’s the most exciting time since Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon.”

The event kicked off three days of programming for MIT Space Week, which also included the Media Lab’s “Beyond the Cradle: Envisioning a New Space Age” on March 14, and the student-led “New Space Age Conference” on March 15.

“We could press on”

As a “baby boomer living through Apollo,” retired astronaut Charles Bolden, NASA’s 12th administrator, said the Apollo program illustrated “how masterful we were at overcoming adversity.” In a keynote address that opened the day’s events, Bolden reminded the audience that, at the time the ambitious program got underway in the 1960s, the country was in the violent thick of the civil rights movement.

“We were killing each other in the streets,” Bolden said. “And yet we had an agency like NASA, and a small group of people, who were able to bear through everything and land on the moon. … We could recognize there were greater things we could do as a people, and we could press on.”

For MIT’s part, the push began with a telegram on Aug. 9, 1961, to Charles Stark Draper, director of the Instrumentation Laboratory, notifying him that NASA had selected the MIT lab “to develop the guidance navigation system of the Project Apollo spacecraft.” Draper, who was known widely as “Doc,” famously assured NASA of MIT’s work by volunteering himself as a crew member on the mission, writing to the agency that “if I am willing to hang my life on our equipment, the whole project will surely have the strongest possible motivation.”

This of course proved unnecessary, and Draper went on to lead the development of the guidance system with “unbounded optimism,” as his former student and colleague Lawrence Young, the MIT Apollo Program Professor, recalled in his remarks.

“We owe the lighting of our fuse to Doc Draper,” Young said.

At the time that MIT took on the Apollo project, the Instrumentation Laboratory, later renamed Draper Laboratory, took up a significant footprint, with 2,000 people and 15 buildings on campus, dedicated largely to the lunar effort.

“The Instrumentation Lab dwarfed the [AeroAstro] department,” said Hastings, joking, “it was more like the department was a small pimple on the Instrumentation Lab.”

Apollo remembered

In a highlight of the day’s events, NASA astronauts Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7) and Charles Duke SM ’64 (Apollo 16), and MIT Instrumentation Laboratory engineers Donald Eyles and William Widnall ’59, SM ’62 — all from the Apollo era — took the stage to reminisce about some of the technical challenges and emotional moments that defined the program.

One of the recurring themes of their conversation was the observation that things simply got done faster back then. For instance, Duke remarked that it took just 8.5 years from when Kennedy first called for the mission, to when Armstrong’s boots hit the lunar surface.

“I would argue the proposal for such a mission would take longer [today],” Duke said to an appreciative rumble from the audience.

The Apollo Guidance Computer, developed at MIT, weighed 70 pounds, consumed 55 watts of power — half the wattage of a regular lightbulb — and took up less than 1 cubic foot inside the spacecraft. The system was one of the first digital flight computers, and one of the first computers to use integrated circuits.  

Eyles and Widnall recalled in detail the technical efforts that went into developing the computer’s hardware and software. “If you’re picturing [the computer code] on a monitor, you’d be wrong,” Eyles told the audience. “We were writing the program on IBM punch cards. That clunking mechanical sound of the key-punch machine was the soundtrack to creating the software.”

Written out, that code famously amounted to a stack of paper as tall as lead software engineer Margaret Hamilton — who was not able to participate in Wednesday’s panel but attended the symposium dinner that evening.

In the end, the Apollo Guidance Computer succeeded in steering 15 space flights, including nine to the moon, and six lunar landings. That’s not to say that the system didn’t experience some drama along the way, and Duke, who was the capsule communicator, or CAPCOM, for Apollo 11, remembers having to radio up to the spacecraft during the now-famous rocky landing.

“When I heard the first alarm go off during the braking phase, I thought we were dead in the water,” Duke said of the first in a series of alerts that the Apollo astronauts reported, indicating that the computer was overloaded, during the most computationally taxing phase of the mission. The spacecraft was several miles off course and needed to fly over a “boulder field,” to land within 60 seconds or risk running out of fuel.

Flight controllers in Houston’s Mission Control Center determined that if nothing else went wrong, the astronats, despite the alarms, could proceed with landing.

“Tension was high,” Duke said of the moment. “You didn’t want to touch down on a boulder and blow a nozzle, and spoil your whole day.”

When the crew finally touched down on the Sea of Tranquility, with Armstrong’s cool report that “the Eagle has landed,” Duke, too wound-up to properly verbalize the callback “Tranquility,” recalls “I was so excited … it came out as ‘Twang,’ or something like that.’ The tension — it was like popping a balloon.”

Since the Apollo era, NASA has launched astronauts on numerous missions, many of whom are MIT graduates. On Wednesday, 13 of those graduates came onstage to be recognized along with the Apollo crew.

In introducing them to the audience, Jeffrey Hoffman, a former astronaut and now AeroAstro professor of the practice, noted MIT’s significant representation in the astronaut community. For instance, in the five missions to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, which comprised 24 spacewalks, 13 of those were performed by MIT graduates.

“That’s pretty cool,” Hoffman said.

On the horizon

The Apollo moon rocks that were were brought back to Earth have “evolved our understanding of how the moon formed,” said Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research and the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. These rocks “vanquished” the idea that the moon originally formed as a cold assemblage of rocks and “foo foo dust,” she said.

Instead, after carefully analyzing samples from Apollo 11 and other missions, scientists at MIT and elsewhere have found that the moon was a dynamic body, with a surface that at one time was entirely molten, and a metallic core, or “dynamo,” powering an early, lunar magnetic field. Even more provocative was the finding that the moon was not in fact “bone-dry,” but actually harbored water — an idea that Zuber said was virtually unpublishable until an MIT graduate reported evidence of water in Apollo samples, after which the floodgates opened in support of the idea.

To consider the next 50 years of space exploration, the MIT symposium featured a panel of faculty members — Paulo Lozano, Danielle Wood, Richard Binzel, and Sara Seager — who highlighted, respectively, the development of tiny thrusters to power miniature spacecraft; an effort to enable wider access to microgravity missions; an MIT student-designed mission (REXIS) that is currently analyzing the near-Earth asteroid Bennu; and TESS and ASTERIA, satellite missions that are currently in orbit, looking for planets and possibly, life, outside our solar system.

Industry leaders also weighed in on the growing commercialization of space exploration, in a panel featuring MIT alums who currently head major aerospace companies.

Keoki Jackson, chief technology officer of Lockheed Martin, noted the pervasiveness of space-based technologies, such as GPS-dependent apps for everything from weather and news, to Uber.

“[Commercial enterprises] have made space a taken-for-granted part of life,” said Jackson, noting later in the panel that in 2015, 1 billion GPS devices had been sold around the world. “This shows you what can happen exponentially when you come up with something truly enabling.”

“The challenge we face is talent, and in particular, diversity,” said John Langford, CEO and founder of Aurora Flight Sciences, who noted the panel’s all-male participants as an example. “It’s an industry-wide challenge. We’re working to reform ourselves, as we move from the brigade-type technologies that we grew up with, to incorporating technologies such as computer technology and artificial intelligence.”

Future missions

In a glimpse of what the future of space exploration might hold, MIT students presented lightning talks on a range of projects, including a custom-designed drill to excavate ice on Mars, a system that makes oxygen on Mars to fuel return missions to Earth, and a plan to send CubeSats around the world to monitor water vapor as a measure of climate change.

Audience members voted online for the best pitch, which ultimately went to Raichelle Aniceto and her presentation of a CubeSat-enabled laser communications system designed to transmit large amounts of data from the moon to Earth in just five minutes.

In the last keynote address of the symposium, Thomas Zubuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, told the audience that there is still a lot of research to be done on the moon, which he said is changing, as evidenced by new craters that have formed in the last 50 years.

“The moon of the Apollo era is not the same moon of today,” said Zurbuchen, who noted that just this week, NASA announced it will open previously unlocked samples of soil collected by the Apollo missions.

In closing the symposium, Dava Newman, the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics and former NASA deputy administrator, envisioned a future dedicated to sending humans back to the moon, and ultimately to Mars.

“I’m a rocket scientist. I got here because of Apollo, and Eleanor Roosevelt said it best: Believe in the beauty of your dreams,” Newman said. “The challenge is, within 50 years, to be boots on Mars. I think we have the brains and the doers and inspiration to really make that happen.”

MIT celebrates 50th anniversary of historic moon landing syndicated from https://osmowaterfilters.blogspot.com/

[thebestwaytravelwithbag-blog]

Women around the world are embracing YouTube as a platform for creative expression, community and entrepreneurship. Whatever your story, whatever your niche interest, you can find people on YouTube who are interested in sharing your passions and your experience; whether it’s popping pimples, ASMR ear cleaning or bird sounds for cats.

YouTube spokesperson Nicole Bell says that the website works for women in two ways: “The first is that there are no conventional gatekeepers, which allows women to invent their own roles and set their own boundaries. There is no one telling you what to say, what to wear or how to look. As a result, we see more women who perhaps don’t fit the conventional model for the types of people that are usually on television –there’s less airbrushed perfection and I think that women respond to that feeling of authenticity. The second part is that women retain complete control of their intellectual property when they start their own YouTube channel–they become creative entrepreneurs who are running their own business.

Here are ten women on YouTube you should be watching right now:

hot for food

Lauren Toyota, Canada’s favourite MuchMusic VJ turned vegan influencer, is the creative genius behind hot for food, where shares her love (and talent) for vegan comfort cooking. Check out her channel for festive food recipes, packed lunch inspo and all things tasty, fun and vegan.

RachhLoves

Toronto-based beauty vlogger Rachel Cooper started RachhLoves YouTube channel as a creative outlet from her marketing job. She now also runs RachhLovesLife, an outlet for her to share parenting and lifestyle tips with her massive online community. Check out her channel for makeup reviews, product hauls and all kinds of beauty tips from a bubbly personality.

April Wilkerson

A self-taught woodworker, April Wilkerson started her YouTube channel as a way to share her projects with others. As her audience grew, she began to realize that YouTube offered a way for her to turn her passion into a thriving business and two years ago she quit her day job to become a full-time DIY woodwork vlogger. Check out her channel to learn how to build your own work bench or how to build a backyard chicken coop.

Hot and Flashy

Angie is beauty vlogger whose makes content for women in their hot-flash years. Angie is putting a real face on fashion and beauty trends for women over 50, sharing her how-to’s and product tutorials that consider the needs of older women. Check out her channel for anti-aging skin care tips, eyelid-lifting eyeshadow tutorials and best to worst product rankings.

How to Cake It

Yolanda Gampp is the self professed Beyoncé of cakes. Gampp works with content creators Connie Contardi and Jocelyn Mercer to collectively run one of the most successful food channels on YouTube. Check out their channel for all kinds of “how to cake it” recipe videos, from Stranger Things waffles to a giant pun pencil.

Aysha Abdul

Aysha’s channel offers something mainstream media doesn’t: representation for black Muslim women who don’t often see themselves reflected in traditional beauty publications. In just a few months, she has amassed a dedicated audience and is redefining what it means to be beautiful. Check out her channel for Eid look books, skin care routines, beauty tutorials, turban style scarf tutorials and more.

Elle Lindquist

Parenting, and lifestyle vlogger, Elle Lindquist, has created a space where women can go to “do mom life together.” Check out her channel for decluttering tips, pregnancy stories and for a natural live birth video with 19 million (!!!) views.

Lauren Messiah

Lauren Messiah is an LA-based personal stylist who uses YouTube to give real-life style advice to real women. Check out her channel for style rules, fashion hacks and a job interview dressing series titled “Dress for the Job You Want.”

The Domestic Geek

Sara Lynn Cauchon started The Domestic Geek as a personal creative outlet while working a day job as a television producer. Now she employs four full-time staff members and calls herself an “accidental entrepreneur.” Check out her channel for all kinds of recipes, from salad in a jar to healthy breakfast cookies.

Cat & Nat

Motherhood is tough. Funny videos help. Cat and Nat are real moms with real stories, and a very real, very hilarious friendship. Check out their channel for the duo’s infamous #MOMTRUTH car videos, where they talk about sex, marriage and cliche mom sayings.