Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 06/13/2010
Support Women Artists Sunday: Esperanza Spalding
Hailed as a prodigy on the acoustic double bass within months of first touching the instrument as a 15-year-old, Esperanza Spalding has emerged as a fine jazz bassist, but has also distinguished herself playing blues, funk, hip-hop, pop fusion, and Brazilian and Afro-Cuban styles as well. Born in Portland, OR in 1984, Spalding was not well served by the public school system and soon dropped out of classes to be home schooled. Returning to the public school system at 15, she encountered her first acoustic bass (she had already been playing violin for several years) and immediately took to the instrument. Dropping out of school again, Spalding enrolled in classes at Portland State University as a 16-year-old, and earned her B.A. in just three years and was immediately hired as …
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Awareness | Posted by Ashleigh J on 06/12/2010
Emotional/Verbal Abuse IS Abuse
“You are worthless. You are nothing, but a worthless slut.”
Have you heard this before?
Is a vile name your term of endearment? Does your partner tell you how pitiful you are? Instead of complimenting your many beauties, he casually makes you aware of all your supposed physical ’flaws’ (the ones he knows will cut you way down deep) and then plays it off like he was just kidding. Has this ever happened to you?
It alarms me that many people think that unless you have a black eye or a broken nose, you are not being abused, or that verbal and emotional warfare is somehow excusable.
I have heard opinions like: a woman is simply making a big deal of nothing or ‘playing’ the abuse card; that it’s ridiculous to classify ‘name calling’ …
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Creative | Posted by Hannah C on 06/11/2010
Tradition
I was thinking about female genital mutilation and the prevalency it still has within a large number of African communities, and in other countries worldwide. After reading Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy I began to watch interviews with women who had been under the knife, and this is my interpretation of one of the ways it takes place.
tradition
it’s tradition, they say
new clothes, new jewellery
this celebration is all for you
that elegant gait, they say
walk with a slip slide shuffle
legs together, like true women
Come inside, they say
every woman has to do it
do you want to get married or not
hold her down, they say
spread her legs
hand me the knife
cut it all out, they say
every lump, every …
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Pop-Culture | Posted by Freddy-May A. on 06/8/2010
Hayley Williams’ Topless Photos: Who Cares?
So, as you may or may not have heard, a topless photo of Hayley
Williams was posted on her Twitter. The post was deleted fifteen
minutes later, and thirty minutes after that, another post appeared saying she’d been hacked. Nobody knows whether or not this is true, but the internet is abuzz with speculation, and, of course, judgments on her moral character. There are some who say “she’d never do that, she was hacked” and some who say there’s no way she was hacked and she’s a trashy slut, and some who say “oh, she made a mistake, we all do.” Well, I’m calling b.s. on all of these viewpoints.
You guys. Big deal. They are boobs. Girls have boobs. Did you
know? Twenty-one-year-old women have boobs. Women who sing for bands I like have boobs, …
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Feminism | Posted by Anne C on 06/7/2010
Body Acceptance
Body image is an issue for a lot of teenage girls, and especially for me. After struggling with a weird relationship with food for the past few years, I’ve recently tried to stop worrying about what I eat. The plan was to start being nicer to myself and my body and to try to be more accepting of the way I am. Still, I secretly wish I was thinner.
But last night, I had a revelation. After cooking and eating a massive curry with my boyfriend, we were both ridiculously stuffed. We had reached the stage of “food coma.” Immediately after we were finished, I got into the old routine of beating myself up about it. I added up the calories in my head, told myself I should have only …
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Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 06/6/2010
Support Women Artists Sunday: Helena Bonham Carter
Helena Bonham Carter, daughter of Raymond Bonham Carter, a merchant banker, and Elena Bonham Carter (née Propper de Callejón), a psychotherapist, was born in Golders Green, London, England on May 26, 1966 and is the youngest of three children. She is the great-granddaughter of former Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith and her blue-blooded family tree also contains Barons and Baronesses, diplomats, and a director.
After experiencing family dramas that included her father’s stroke-which left him wheelchair-bound-and attending South Hampstead High School and Westminster School in London, Bonham Carter devoted herself to an acting career. That trajectory actually began in 1979 when, at age 13, she entered a national poetry writing competition and used her second place winnings to place her photo in the casting directory “Spotlight.” She soon had her …
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Creative | Posted by Sarah Coggrave on 06/4/2010
Organs Grabbing
Organs grabbing
My greedy little body
It’s full of little hands
Feed me now they shout at me
You must meet our demands
Every tiny organ
Is pushing for its share
I was first no me pick me
Their fingers everywhere
Fighting in their thousands
A sea of biting teeth
There’s never going to be enough
For everyone to eat
But please oh please we’re starving
Cry voices full of woe
Without you we can’t function
And there’s nowhere else to go
Above them comes a cackle
A monster way up high
Is stopping me from feeding them
And willing them to die
You stupid lowly body
The demon screams with glee
Your disgusting worthless pleasures
Mean nothing now to me
Filthy maggots crawling
Decay a dying corpse
Consume the …
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Creative | Posted by Markita S on 06/3/2010
The Music in the Bedroom
The whole thing starts with a sentence—not even—a word. As I sit on the scratchy, green couch, mashed up between Sara and Noah, I hear that word and I just feel… odd. It’s like all of me, my powdered face, my made-up eyes, my straightened hair, my torn-up jeans, all of it—it just zaps. Popular. It’s simple. A single word and I can’t see myself as that same girl, the one that I was this morning. I’m still me, but that very idea brings tears to my eyes. Because, really, what is that? Who am I?
Am I the girl who just yesterday felt blessed that school was over so she could escape the lack of attention or interaction that she had with her peers, and the overexcited announcements of …
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