As the Trump campaign’s self-implosion continues, and the candidate increasingly lashes out, many have pointed to historical parallels: Hitler in the bunker, Nixon at the height of Watergate. But for me, the figure who comes to mind is not a politician but a literary character: Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Macbeth, whose “vaulting ambition” led to murder, civil war, and his own eventual destruction. Now I’m not saying that Trump has murdered anyone (Don’t sue me, Donald!), but the parallels are there.
Read MoreHow I'm Navigating 'Being American' as an Immigrant & Mom
The USA vs. Netherlands women’s soccer friendly is about to kick off. We are at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, seated close enough to discern the revved up expressions of the players on the field. It is the first time my 10-year-old daughter, a soccer player, and I, the quintessential soccer mom, are watching a pro team up close.
Read More‘Nowhere To Grow But Up’: The Educational Funnel
When we’re young, we can say things like, “I want to be an astronaut and a rock star” or “I want to be president one day, but also a princess.” And we can get away with it. We can get away with these extravagant ambitions because, starting out on our journey, we are encouraged to explore, to be curious, and to be everything that we can be.
Read MoreI Used To Be A Judgmental Elitist (Overcoming Snob Behavior)
It is really astounding how many self-proclaimed “open minded” people are actually closed off vicious judgmental creatures. It’s hilarious, actually. Then again, my main mode of handling sad stuff is via laughter, so there we have it.
Read MoreSee Which The Cure Song Fits Your Zodiac Sign
I started to think about Cure songs that correspond with zodiac signs, and came up with a list below
Read MoreWitchy World Roundup - July 2016
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (forthcoming 2016, ELJ Publications) & Xenos (forthcoming 2017, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Huffington Post, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. She has lead workshops at Brooklyn Poets.
Read More#BlackLivesMatter – Resources, Donation Links & Required Reading
BY LISA MARIE BASILE
We have no right words here, but we know we want to help. We're filled with anger, sadness and – instead of what should be shock – exhaustion. We stand as allies.
It's hard to watch our friends hurting, watch people sobbing in videos, watching bodies dying. It's hard to watch people (our families or friends sometimes!) post things like #AllLivesMatter. It's hard to see white people staying quiet.
It doesn't always feel obvious to people to do something. To take action. It can be stunning, frightening and hard to know what to say. That's OK sometimes, but you've seen too much to stay quiet now. Speaking out, watching the videos, engaging in the truth, and educating ourselves on the issue of police brutality is necessary.
As allies, we need to inform others and try to dismantle a system that feeds on ignorance and hatred. There are things we can do. Staying silent is worse than anything and listening to the black community at this time is the most accountable thing we can do. Listen. Listen. And then tell others in your community why #BlackLivesMatter and why they need to listen and speak out too. Tell others about institutionalized racism. Explain. Take a teaching moment and educate another human being.
You can talk to your parents, friends, spouses, neighbors and strangers and tell them police brutality is NOT acceptable. Racism is NOT acceptable. Inform people. Be outraged. Don't accept ignorant comments. Block people who spread hate on your social networks. Share words by people of color.
TAKE ACTION.
You can also Join Campaign Zero, join Ijeoma Oluo's The Accountability Project. Join a #BlackLivesMatter chapter. You can also write to your mayor, call your police station, write to your city council members (here's NY, but you can find anything by searching online "city council + city") and demand police brutality reform. You can ask what they're doing about this. This is something you CAN do.
DONATE.
Go Fund Me: Philando Castile's family
Go Fund Me: Alton Sterling's family
EDUCATE.
There has been a lot of education happening, and we wanted to share with you what we have been reading in the past few days.
I Need Justice, I Need Peace: A QTPOC Roundtable
Alton Sterling and When Black Lives Stop Mattering
5 Facts That Will Absolutely Infuriate You About Police and Racist Violence
This is what white people can do to support #BlackLivesMatter
Advice for White Folks in the Wake of the Police Murder of a Black Person
What You Can Do Right Now About Police Brutality
We Can Help Each Other Cope: One Simple Way to Be With Each Other Through Pain Right Now
Rape, Alton Sterling, And The Complexity Of Justice
POC Solidarity In Love: How To Support Our Black Partners and Friends In These Trying Times
My Doppelgramma
I met my ex-husband’s grandmother when she was still quite the vital old lady. She drove her own car at eighty, even though she could barely see over the dash. A serious devout Catholic, Grandma Marge had a mind of her own and never a hair out of place. I thought for sure she would hate me and send my Pagan Jewish butt right back to the West Village. After all, I was engaged to her GODSON. His confirmation pictures greeted me as I walked into her foyer, right next to the huge crucifix. Christ looked as petrified and wary as I felt on that first meeting.
Read MoreHow My 85-Year-Old Mom Rebooted Her Modeling Career
BY ANNA MURRAY
“Does your mother have an agent?” the creative director asked.
Eileen Ford died two years ago. “Um. Not at the moment.”
“What about travel to Paris? Is she up for it?”
I was waiting in line for chopped salads. Ninety seconds prior, I saw the overseas number and answered my cell phone. Now I was talking to a woman from my past about pitching my mother and me in a global ad campaign.
A photo essay I wrote for Vox was going viral. It was about my mom, Patsy Shally, a former world-famous fashion model.
From 1948 through 1960, my mother was the apex of commercial beauty – young, thin and exquisite. Discovered at 13, she was a top model for Eileen Ford, on the cover of practically everything. She went for screen tests with Rock Hudson and one-on-one interviews with legendary Hollywood producer Melvyn Leroy.
Mom and I recreated her most famous Vogue, Glamour, and McCall’s covers. The piece I wrote was about beauty and aging.
A particular series of photographs was drawing the most attention: our twist on my mother’s 1956 Irving Penn Vogue cover.
“The elderly shouldn’t be invisible,” Mom said. “We matter.”
It was clear from our photo shoot Mom, at 85, still “had it.”
The project hit home. We were picked up in the Daily Mail and ran in their network worldwide. We were being tweeted by Racked, by Newsweek and by the producer of Rizzoli and Isles.
People were contacting me from all nooks and crannies of my life, including Sam, a long-past acquaintance, and the current creative director for an international ad agency. She said our story resonated. The brand was thrilled. We could be big.
“I think she can probably travel,” I answered. Mom has her frail moments. But we were talking Paris.
“I’ll need whatever additional photos you have. Also traffic and social shares.”
Over the last few weeks, Mom and I had received hundreds of comments from people who said our project touched them.
Here’s what I found most surprising:
· People called us “fearless.”
· People said they cried.
· Men said the essay touched them.
· Someone suggested my mother might be the next Mrs. Donald Trump.
Mom and I had joined a great zeitgeist-y army of age-barrier-busting beauty warriors. There was Elon Musk’s mother, 68, now elbowing out Botox blondes for ad campaigns. And Vogue putting a 100-year-old on its cover for their 100th anniversary.
“It's important that all women and consumers are featured on the runway and in advertorials. Women of all ages wear clothes- why should they be left out?” said fashion designer Carrie Hammer, famous for her recent fall 2015 show called, “Role Models Not Runway Models.”
“Your recreations of your mother’s covers are a powerful message of love, courage and understanding,” said Nyna Giles, author of the upcoming book The Bridesmaid’s Daughter.
Giles was one of the most amazing out-of-the-woodwork surfacers. Her mother, Carolyn Scott, modeled with mine. Giles book recounts her mother’s career, including Barbizon roomie Grace Kelly. It will be published by St. Martin’s Press next year.
It’s important, Giles said, even at this late date, to give our mothers their names back. “They were the first super models. Today they would have been household names. But back then, only the photographers were credited.”
A modeling job in 2016 would be quite a capper to Mom’s career. What a terrific irony: My mom, who defined the mainstream ideal of youth and beauty, was challenging that very ideal in her 9th decade.
The next few weeks were ferociously busy. Sam’s team prepared the pitch and she contacted me daily for additional information—copies of comments, web stats, requests for more photographs. Dad, 88, got their passports renewed.
Mom was calm. She knew the gig, literally, despite the 56-year gap between this and her last job. She only asked, “Did they say how many days would we be working?” There would, after all, be shopping to do.
Then, a week ago, Sam said the brand in question was favoring an alternate concept her agency had pitched.
I was disappointed. Mom shrugged: That’s life in super model fast lane. Sam salved the blow by saying I would be shocked and “so proud” once I knew who actually got the job. “You won’t believe who you were up against and almost made it!”
Who could it be? I conducting a quick survey of Mom’s and my new fans—asking them to guess who won out over us.
“Lord, I hope it’s not Kim Kardashian and Caitlyn Jenner!” Howled one. That might rattle even professional Mom’s sang froid.
Here are the guesses. The leading candidates for Mom’s and my nemeses:
· Gwyneth Paltrow & Blythe Danner
· Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson
· Isabella Rossellini and Elettra Rossellini Wiedemann
· Ellen & Betty DeGeneres
· Madonna & Lourdes Leon
· Jerry Hall & Georgia May Jagger
· Iman & Lexi Bowie
· Jada Pinkett Smith and Willow Smith
· Twiggy and Carly Lawson
· Zoe Kravitz and Lisa Bonet
· Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt
I’m keeping watch on Ad Age to see if someone gets it right.
In the meantime, we are receiving other interesting nibbles. And Mom could really use an agent.
Anna Murray is CEO of emedia, llc., a technology consulting company, and a writer. Her essays have appeared in Vox, The Daily Mail, Soundings Review, Piker Press, Adanna, and The Guardian Witness. Her recently completed new novel is represented by David Black Agency. It features a once-famous model and her look-alike daughter. Her non-fiction title, The Complete Software Project Manager, was published in January 2016 by John Wiley & Sons. One reviewer commented, “This is a technical book that reads like a novel.”
Witchy World Roundup: June 2016
BY JOANNA C. VALENTE
From Lindy West to Casey Rocheteau, we've got it all:
'Beyond the “girl power” anthem: Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey and pop’s radical embrace of female vulnerability' by Arielle Bernstein on Salon:
"The most interesting female artists today are pushing away from “girl power” for something more interesting—vulnerability. For the past few years, two of the most interesting and different artists, Beyoncé and Lana Del Rey, have released albums that unabashedly reclaim the love story as a fertile ground for asking existential questions, not just about what it means to be a woman in the world, but also what it means to be a person."
Lindy West on why you should silence your trolls on Buzzfeed:
"Just blocking and ignoring never felt satisfying to me. It just felt so passive and it felt unfair that we were supposed to not talk about this thing that is just pervasive in our professional lives. And the justification was like, if you give them attention then they’ll keep doing it. Well, they’re not stopping anyway! They’re going to hate me no matter what I do. So either I have this sort of unsatisfying, wet-blanket, powerless feeling, or I take control of the conversation. And I’m a professional writer. I’m better at writing than them. It’s really easy to win an argument with an internet troll if you’re good with language and you’re smart.
I started doing it and I don’t know that it made a difference either way, but it was at least privileging my feelings over the troll’s feelings. Why should I not do this because it might make some dude happy? I don’t care if he’s happy or not happy. I care about myself and my mental health. And something always sat wrong with me about hundreds of people screaming at me trying to make me go away, trying to drive me out of my job and silence me. Silence never felt like the right response to that."
Mary Gaitskill was interviewed at Guernica, and she's pretty badass:
"But at a very core level, people still think that a woman who doesn’t have children or doesn’t want children is really lacking in something. I’ve seen this over and over again in my life. I’ve had this thinking used against me repeatedly. I remember I had a therapist once, and I brought this up, and she said, “Well, I think women who don’t have children feel very self-critical. They feel bad, so they think other people are critical in that way.”
Bridget Minamore on ‘Racism and misogyny explains why there are so few black women in politics' on The Pool:
"For the black female politician in the West, racism and sexism (or, as feminist scholar Moya Bailey called it, misogynoir) is a part of life. Like all women, the way we look is often disparaged, but brown skin takes any sexist mocking or criticism and adds a grimy layer of racism to it – like the icing on a particularly shitty cake."
Mallika Rao talks ‘From Nina to Lemonade, Why We’re Still So Bad at Talking About Colorism' on Slate:
"Yet even as terms like yellowface and whitewash sink into our cultural vocabulary, there remains confusion on basic matters of colorism. In a 1983 essay, the writer Alice Walker coined the word to explain “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color.” Simply: Lighter is better. “Light blacks,” as Walker called them, fare better in white society than “black blacks,” and their skin is prized in black communities. Colorism endures because both black and white people perpetuate it."
Ella Wilks-Harper on ‘There’s a Fine Line Between Tokenism and Diversity‘ on Gal-Dem:
"Diversity and tokenism also comes when organisations employ people to enhance diversity, but then assume the skills and competencies of the individual are trapped within their identity. It becomes a problem when their identities are assumed to not be compatible with the mainstream. Within journalism, they are then only asked to write about black issues or Muslim issues, as opposed to being allowed to explore their careers and abilities in any area they feel interested in."
Joanna Sing explores race in ‘What I Have Learnt from Being (Occasionally) White-Passing‘ on Gal-Dem:
"However, this is not to say that being white-passing does not come with its own unique experiences and issues. For instance, you have the privilege of being considered “one of our own” by white people, and are treated as such, but this does also mean white people sometimes feel comfortable enough around you to air their racist beliefs. Sometimes about one of the ethnic groups you associate with; such as that of your mother."
Casey Rocheteau challenged the way the lit community is run in her amazing piece ‘Literary Juneteenth (or Why I Left The Offing)‘ on The Offing:
"In other words, despite her having the best intentions and excellent experience, I nonetheless began to ask ‘how is this magazine truly an agent for change if it seems to exploit the very population it seeks to serve?"
Seeking Submissions – Disability, Chronic Illness & Mental Health
BY ALAINA LEARY
As a disabled woman, these kinds of stories and perspectives are so important to me. I grew up thinking my existence was a burden - literally - and that I'd never be employed, that I had a higher chance of homelessness, that I couldn't make it, especially since I'm not only disabled, but also queer and middle class. I want these stories to be told. My parents were/are both mentally ill and disabled too. My mom couldn't drive, was visually impaired and stopped being able to work around the time I was born. But beyond my own family, I didn't know anyone who was disabled or ill. I didn't know it was a thing you could be and still be okay. That's why representation is so important and why I want to help publish some of those voices.
Editors Joanna C. Valente & Alaina Leary will be editing this special issue, so please submit your stories and artwork to them by August 1.
An Apology Letter to the 8-Year-Old Girl at the Salon
I don’t know your name, little girl, but I do know that I owe you an apology. I would have given you one in person, but I was feeling too ashamed. Do you know this word, shame? I hope you don’t. I hope you never do.
Read MoreI’m Not Your Inspiration Porn: On Being a Disabled, Queer Survivor
I'm a queer, disabled survivor, but I'm not your "inspiration porn."
BY ALAINA LEARY
I remember the first time I heard it: “You should be so proud, after all that you’ve been through!” I was 11 years old. It was within a year of my mom’s sudden, unexpected death, and I’d been given several awards and switched into the Honors programs halfway through sixth grade.
When I first heard it, there were so many thoughts running through my head. I was only a kid, and I really didn’t know how to react to compliments yet. I heard that I should be proud of my accomplishments, but I also heard that pride was based on the struggles I’d survived. Would I have been showered with these accolades if I were just a normal 11-year-old?
I guess I’ll never know. Since day one, I’ve been part of the other—marginalized groups that are frequently discriminated against. I have several interconnected sensory and developmental disabilities—autism, with comorbid dyspraxia and sensory processing disorder—that can be hard to explain to other people. I have no sense of balance, so I can’t ride a bike, walk in a straight line one foot at a time, or walk the balance beam. My brain shuts down if I experience sensory overload, and it’s very difficult for me to learn faces, geographical directions, and, for whatever reason, the parts of a sentence.
Because I’m disabled, from the beginning, I was always going to be subject to inspiration porn—either that or its direct counterpart, people feeling sorry for me or my caregivers because of the things I can’t do.
But I never made it to the point where I was somebody’s disability-specific inspiration porn, because my story became so much more than that. My story became one of survival, perseverance, and following your dreams. And people loved it.
When I was 11, my mom died unexpectedly, and my world was thrown into chaos. At the same time, I was exploring my sexuality, and came out as gay to friends and family. I was bullied relentlessly by my peers for years as a result. In early high school, I was the victim of sexual assault three times. In college, one of my best friends died in a car accident, and I was raped at a college party. Along the way, I’ve also lost aunts, uncles, grandparents, family pets, and have dealt with my dad’s worsening physical and cognitive health.
“Inspiration porn” was a word coined by the disabled community, and it’s a word that I sometimes use to describe myself. The people who are tokenizing me don’t always know that I’m disabled, but they might, or they see the symptoms but don’t recognize that they make up a disability. I've taken the word to mean, in my personal experience, that people use my story to be inspired because of what I've accomplished in spite of hardship. In spite of disability, in spite of being marginalized, in spite of so much loss at a young age.
Being inspiration porn does a funny thing to your psyche: in equal parts, you’re so proud to be such an advocate for the communities you’re a part of, and you’re happy to inspire others who may be struggling; but you’re also thrown off, because you’re so much more than an “inspiration because of your circumstances.”
When I first started receiving these compliments, I was only a kid. After years of one-on-one tutoring, special education classes, and physical, speech, and occupational therapy, I made the Honor roll. I got into Honors classes. I got the top awards for best grades in English and Science. I read more books in a year than anyone in my class. I was on TV. I was in the newspaper. I wrote a book, met the mayor of my town, and got an award for it.
And what did people see? They saw the story. They saw me as a headline. Here I was, seemingly “formerly disabled” girl who failed English class, who barely passed the second grade, who couldn’t ride a bike or walk up the stairs one foot at a time, getting straight A’s.
Somewhere along the way, being everyone’s inspiration porn became a part of my identity. I heard it so often that I went along with it—and that was easy. All I had to do was keep up a string of constant accomplishments, each one slightly more impressive than the last, and make sure they were publicly known. In more ways than one, I became almost addicted to the rush that came with the slew of compliments.
But giving in to the inspiration porn doesn’t allow me to fully be myself. I am disabled. I am queer. I am a rape survivor. But there is so much more to those parts of me than my ability to accomplish “in spite of.”
I am disabled. I am queer. I am a rape survivor. But there is so much more to those parts of me than my ability to accomplish “in spite of.”
People mean well, and they sometimes get it right. My cousin and I have a special relationship, in that the first thing she always says to me when we hang out is, "I'm really proud of you. But I would be proud of you no matter what." She congratulates me on my work and my education, but says that her love and pride are not contingent on those markers of success. They're unconditional.
It's something we don't talk about often. Not in the space of marginalized groups, but not in majority spaces either: the radical idea that you can be proud of someone and love them beyond the way they're meeting societal standards of success, like education, work, and professional achievements.
It's probably why I'm so bad at taking compliments. Just last week, I was distinguished as an alumni speaker at my alma mater, and it involved being showered with compliments both before and after my speech from faculty and students alike. Part of it is because I've adopted a lifelong growth mindset; the idea that my work and I can always be improved. But part of it is also because, in the back of my mind, I'm wondering: "Would people be proud of me if I were a queer, disabled survivor who wasn't published in Cosmopolitan, earning a master's degree, and working full-time?"
That's not because the people in my life make me feel that way. It's because I've internalized the idea that being disabled and a survivor are bad, and they're things to overcome and leave behind. It's only in recent years that I stopped feeling the same way about being queer, and a lot of that has to do with shifting the way we talk about LGBTQIA people: not solely classified as burdens or inspiration, but as fully-actualized people. I'm starting to see the same mindset shift with disability and mental health, but there's so much work to be done and conversations that need to happen in a public space. A huge step is adding well-rounded representation in the media, so people have a window to look through; to see that a disabled person or a survivor is so much more than just a label.
Being a disabled, queer survivor isn’t something I overcame to succeed. Part of the reason I’m doing so well—living my life, loving it every day—is because I’m disabled. I may not be able to diagram a sentence, but I can spot copyediting mistakes just because they don’t fit the patterns I’ve seen across hundreds of thousands of words I’ve read. Because of my disability, I have the intense ability to hyper-focus on something I’m doing for several hours at a time without interruption. I’m also very adept at picking up new tasks and creating, and it’s because of my disability that I was able to teach myself Photoshop, InDesign, HTML/CSS, and JavaScript.
After my mom died, I threw myself into being busy. I’d always been a creator—someone who wanted to make the things that didn’t already exist, and who was very hands on in her approach to creating. Being busy distracted me from being sad. During the nights when I was home after school and mourning, I threw myself into writing a book about losing my mom, and then producing it: creating the layout, setting the typography, designing the cover, and printing and binding it.
Being busy provided reassurance for me when I went through tough times. I lost my mom, so I learned how to code web layouts and design graphics for them. I was sexually assaulted, so I threw myself into photo editing and professional photography. I was bullied for being queer, so I moderated online social spaces for LGBTQIA youth. These were all skills I continued developing, and I owe a lot of my success to living through these experiences.
When people reduce me to inspiration porn, what they’re often missing is how integral my disability, my queerness, and the things I’ve survived are to the person I am today. My success and my struggles are all wrapped up together, and my identity can’t be reduced to “moving past” or “overcoming,” when the very reason I’m so passionate and driven is because I’m there, in the trenches, living life as a disabled, queer survivor.
It’s not in spite of what I’ve gone through that I succeed. It’s because of.
Alaina Leary is a native Boston studying for her MA in Publishing and Writing at Emerson College. She's also working as an editor and a social media designer for several magazines and small businesses. Her work has been published inCosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Seventeen, BUST, AfterEllen, Ravishly, BlogHer, The Mighty, and more. When she's not busy playing around with words, she spends her time surrounded by her two cats, Blue and Gansey, or at the beach. She can often be found re-reading her favorite books and covering everything in glitter. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @alainaskeys.
Autism Isn't a Dirty Word, But It Feels Like One
I’m sitting at my computer desk when the email appears in my inbox.
“We’re honored to invite you...” It’s my undergraduate university, asking me to appear as an alumni speaker at the annual Spring Gathering.
I already know what my friends will say when I tell them about it. “Wow, but you’re only a year out of school!” “I told you, you’re the most successful person in our class!”
I stare at the email, blinking several times just to see if it will disappear.
Read MoreThe Night We Didn’t Fall In Love
A female body in mom jeans looks at a water color of Bianca Stone’s depicting the three fates. Only one faces us and says in her speech bubble, “I’m filled with rooms I’ve never seen before.” It hangs in my living room. I am the female body, a room I see so much of I don’t see it at all. I see it so little that I’m usually digging my nails into my skin in order to get anything practical done without overwhelming anxiety. How do I get this out of the room? I got Netflix binge-streaming House of Cards to distract me from my loneliness and this. I miss something I’ve never had, stupid saudade. How much of the wine bottle has been drunk and will it get me to the end of the night?
Read More