TIME magazine recently interviewed Shailene Woodley, a 22 year old actress starring in the already released film Divergent and the upcoming The Fault in Our Stars. Yesterday, they posted an article entitled, "Shailene Woodley on Why She's Not a Feminist." As TIME points out, it's "one of the hottest topics in Hollywood lately," which is why they devoted a whole piece to it. Big star meets big trend and the end result is pageviews and ad revenue.
Honestly, I was surprised by Woodley's answer. Summary: she loves men and prefers the idea of sisterhood. I thought it was common knowledge that feminism isn't the same as hating men. Firstly, there's Beyonce. Her fifth album, released December last year, has multiple feminist songs and even handily includes a definition in Flawless***. Even before then, in September 2013, Glamour magazine did an interview with Anna Holmes, founding editor of Jezebel, on how the 'F-word' has returned. It isn't the only mainstream women's magazine to address misconceptions and present a positive view of the word feminist. Outside of magazines there's the bestselling "How to be a Woman" by Caitlin Moran and the Everyday Sexism project.
Normally, I would be exasperated by a celebrity who gave an answer similar to Woodley's. This time I'm not for the unfair reason that I like her. She seems like a friendly hippie who is dedicated to her job. Plus in her soon to be released film, an adaptation of a book I love, she plays the main character to high praise from its author. Ultimately, I wish that Woodley had answered yes. We have come so far that it's easy to think that we're done. (I'm talking about the UK and the USA here.) But we're not. There's still the pay gap and the lack of women in politics and a whole stack of problems women face just for being women. Feminism is about changing that. (There are various ideas within feminism on what counts as inequality, why it exists and how to address it, but the main point stays the same.)
Woodley's comments make it clear that (despite Beyonce etc.) it's still fairly common to think men and women have the same inherent worth, but edge away from the word "feminist." It often comes along with the sentiment that since women have more rights now equality has been achieved. Labelling yourself a feminist means actively announcing that you think this isn't the case. Hopefully, this prompts other people to explore the reasons why. By saying that you aren't a feminist, because you "love men" the word feminism is unfairly tainted. That keeps people away from projects helping women, because they rightfully use words like feminism, sexism and patriarchy.
Tuesday, 6 May 2014
Monday, 5 May 2014
Recommendation: YouTube's Central Standard
Today's post is my first 'it's BEDM, so it's going to be a quickie.' But, luckily for me, it also backs up the post I made yesterday. There are so many small, well crafted creative projects that have obviously been made by dedicated people on the internet. Posting them online means millions can watch the end result, but unfortunately it's easy for them to miss the screens of people who would appreciate it. I found out about this YouTube series, which fits into one of my favourite types of documentary: children on education, via Leslie Datsis (aka lesliefoundhergrail) on Twitter. (All hail the benign power of social media spreading it's warmth over us.) These are just typical kids, but after just over 15 minutes, you'll get to see them (plus their families) as individuals with all the human traits that are usually hidden to those beyond immediate circles. Watch it.
Sunday, 4 May 2014
In Defence of Social Media
Remember that time you held your dying wife's hand? Or at least tried to, but your smartphone was in the way. To be fair, that's a straw man presentation of the following video, but I couldn't resist. I finally clicked on it after seeing it posted several times on facebook. (Oh, the joy when irony helps to prove your point.) I'd resisted before, because I knew what was coming. Here's the video and my born in the mid 90s and defending social media til I die response.
Social media is far from flawless. My biggest beef is shallow 'awareness' campaigns quickly passed around and then forgotten. The keeping up with the Joneses effect is intensified with crop and filter filled instagram feeds. Scrolling through twitter can be mindless habit. It's good to take a break occasionally. Just like it's good to take break from anything. Plus, all of these things would still exist to some extent without social media. What gets to me is the air of superiority. As if without social media we would all be so much purer, willing to make friends with anyone, walking around with a verbal openness and comparing heart covered sleeves. At best we would get more practise with awkward eye contact on the bus. At worst we would be aware of how much we were missing, from photos of a best friend's newborn to quickly arranging plans in facebook groups. One of the reasons social media is so popular is the convenience it brings. Posting a link online reaches a wider audience at a faster pace than individual messaging.
Social media dominates, but it doesn't rule. Undoubtedly, it's ingrained into our routines. Otherwise companies wouldn't be so dedicated to it. But the idea that we forsake everything else, cradling a screen to chase a like, while life thrives around us is false. Children still play on swings and run around in parks. Only a genuinely neglectful parent would constantly abandon their toddler with an iPad. People do inappropriately bring out their phones at dinner tables and social events. However, pretending that the evening has no conversation, just a collective, tapping silence where it doesn't even occur to people to remember their companions' faces is unfair.
It also completely wipes the genuine communication, connection and safe places formed online by humans fortunate enough to have access to technology. Emotion, often more honest and unfiltered than in "real" life, is shared amongst the mudune in the digital world, too. Maybe he could have met his wife on a dating website. The heartwarming story of an estranged pair finding each other through facebook has already become a trope. Websites like tumblr allow people to share art they've worked on or simply join a freak out over their favourite TV show. Social media amplifies the world right in front of us and presents it to us on a screen. Whether you think we're scarily addicted or not, you should allow it to be both bad and good - it's complex and nuanced, just like the people who use it.
Social media is far from flawless. My biggest beef is shallow 'awareness' campaigns quickly passed around and then forgotten. The keeping up with the Joneses effect is intensified with crop and filter filled instagram feeds. Scrolling through twitter can be mindless habit. It's good to take a break occasionally. Just like it's good to take break from anything. Plus, all of these things would still exist to some extent without social media. What gets to me is the air of superiority. As if without social media we would all be so much purer, willing to make friends with anyone, walking around with a verbal openness and comparing heart covered sleeves. At best we would get more practise with awkward eye contact on the bus. At worst we would be aware of how much we were missing, from photos of a best friend's newborn to quickly arranging plans in facebook groups. One of the reasons social media is so popular is the convenience it brings. Posting a link online reaches a wider audience at a faster pace than individual messaging.
Social media dominates, but it doesn't rule. Undoubtedly, it's ingrained into our routines. Otherwise companies wouldn't be so dedicated to it. But the idea that we forsake everything else, cradling a screen to chase a like, while life thrives around us is false. Children still play on swings and run around in parks. Only a genuinely neglectful parent would constantly abandon their toddler with an iPad. People do inappropriately bring out their phones at dinner tables and social events. However, pretending that the evening has no conversation, just a collective, tapping silence where it doesn't even occur to people to remember their companions' faces is unfair.
It also completely wipes the genuine communication, connection and safe places formed online by humans fortunate enough to have access to technology. Emotion, often more honest and unfiltered than in "real" life, is shared amongst the mudune in the digital world, too. Maybe he could have met his wife on a dating website. The heartwarming story of an estranged pair finding each other through facebook has already become a trope. Websites like tumblr allow people to share art they've worked on or simply join a freak out over their favourite TV show. Social media amplifies the world right in front of us and presents it to us on a screen. Whether you think we're scarily addicted or not, you should allow it to be both bad and good - it's complex and nuanced, just like the people who use it.
Saturday, 3 May 2014
Give me some advice?
One of my default sad places: under the covers, only light from laptop tipped on its side and scrolling through advice column archives. Advice on almost anything personal or emotional, from failing marriages to tricky step-families, has become my balm. Often I don't face the particular problem myself. Part of why I read them is out of curiosity. Getting details of people's lives that are much easier to reveal under the label of Anonymous or S, aged 16. A quick peek of what they're willing to write down confirms that other people have messes too. This isn't support of schadenfreude. I hope everyone who comes across them treats them with sympathy rather than superiority. Or feels the quick spread of relief from being able to think 'me too.' Or remembers the self that was in the same position and gives their own tips and support.
Not all the advice giving places I check into on the internet have qualified experts. Often the responses, typed out paragraphs or a few quick sentences, come from people who are kind enough to lend an ear and have reflected on their own experiences. Obviously, the internet, being what it is, is full of terrible advice, and there are problems that can't escape professionals. But sometimes sticky situations aren't mammoth beasts and just need a friendly face to tame and shrink them.
The main reason I like reading these questions are the answers that come along with them. A quick pick me up from the 'Dear Auntie,' maybe a ticking off and then a plan of action. Advice columns give me hope that every problem has a solution. It's so much easier to read through seemingly straightforward steps than to live them. Often they are relentless hopeful to counteract the despair of the asker. They seem like recalibration. They make me feel that I too can go out there and try again.
Also, during moments of just clicking around the internet out of a low level boredom, advice columns can be fun. Like reading through requests for nicety procedure on Social Q's and seeing if I can guess the correct response. I'm obviously not the only one who enjoys reading advice. Most newspapers carry a column, or even several. It's just easier, like almost everything, to find them now thanks to the world wide web. I hope that I live a life where I've risked and endured enough to actually give advice.
Not all the advice giving places I check into on the internet have qualified experts. Often the responses, typed out paragraphs or a few quick sentences, come from people who are kind enough to lend an ear and have reflected on their own experiences. Obviously, the internet, being what it is, is full of terrible advice, and there are problems that can't escape professionals. But sometimes sticky situations aren't mammoth beasts and just need a friendly face to tame and shrink them.
The main reason I like reading these questions are the answers that come along with them. A quick pick me up from the 'Dear Auntie,' maybe a ticking off and then a plan of action. Advice columns give me hope that every problem has a solution. It's so much easier to read through seemingly straightforward steps than to live them. Often they are relentless hopeful to counteract the despair of the asker. They seem like recalibration. They make me feel that I too can go out there and try again.
Also, during moments of just clicking around the internet out of a low level boredom, advice columns can be fun. Like reading through requests for nicety procedure on Social Q's and seeing if I can guess the correct response. I'm obviously not the only one who enjoys reading advice. Most newspapers carry a column, or even several. It's just easier, like almost everything, to find them now thanks to the world wide web. I hope that I live a life where I've risked and endured enough to actually give advice.
Friday, 2 May 2014
Dear Diary
Today's post is inspired by this video posted by Rosianna Halse Rojas:
I followed a classic child/tween diary journey. A gift of a page a day book or a flower covered notebook branded 'journal' would be given to me by a relative. I would faithfully cram in my routine from morning until getting home from school. Then after a week it would be found shoved in alongside novels in the bookcase. Once in a while guilt would require a 'Sorry I haven't written in so long, but I'm just so busy learning about the water cycle' entry.
Somehow I had absorbed the idea that keeping a diary was a noble thing to do. It was something you were supposed to do. It was of vital importance that all your hours on any given day were accounted for. This was so boring that I managed to overcome my guilt and give up altogether. Until the day before The Party, it was Year 8 or 9, I had found myself invited to the birthday of one of the popular girls, and it was freak out time. (Seriously, you couldn't pay me to be an early teen again.) I jotted down my terror, writing more about my feelings than the details of who, what, when, where. Since then, minus one temporary break up, I've kept a diary fairly consistently.
In my early teens I wrote for my future self and tried to cover any detail that might be relevant to the story. So, it wasn't completely removed from the rigid structure of my earliest writing days. Looking over old entries I do find parts of my life I'd forgotten about. However, it's mostly surveying a bog of sadness, with one foot in, remembering what it was like to be stuck there. (Even £1m wouldn't get me to consider a return trip.)
Like Rosianna, I lied to my diary or rather I lied to myself and put it down on paper. Now I force myself, mostly successfully, to write honestly and scribble down whatever I want to. Every time I read more recent entries I'm surprised by how young I sound. It's a straight to page feelings splurge without any polish. There aren't any planned metaphors or symbols or anything to make the writing itself particularly readable to anyone but me. Ultimately, that's what my diaries are for now. The current me, releasing feelings in a place where there is no one, unless I'm mean to myself, to judge them.
- Ayomide
I followed a classic child/tween diary journey. A gift of a page a day book or a flower covered notebook branded 'journal' would be given to me by a relative. I would faithfully cram in my routine from morning until getting home from school. Then after a week it would be found shoved in alongside novels in the bookcase. Once in a while guilt would require a 'Sorry I haven't written in so long, but I'm just so busy learning about the water cycle' entry.
Somehow I had absorbed the idea that keeping a diary was a noble thing to do. It was something you were supposed to do. It was of vital importance that all your hours on any given day were accounted for. This was so boring that I managed to overcome my guilt and give up altogether. Until the day before The Party, it was Year 8 or 9, I had found myself invited to the birthday of one of the popular girls, and it was freak out time. (Seriously, you couldn't pay me to be an early teen again.) I jotted down my terror, writing more about my feelings than the details of who, what, when, where. Since then, minus one temporary break up, I've kept a diary fairly consistently.
In my early teens I wrote for my future self and tried to cover any detail that might be relevant to the story. So, it wasn't completely removed from the rigid structure of my earliest writing days. Looking over old entries I do find parts of my life I'd forgotten about. However, it's mostly surveying a bog of sadness, with one foot in, remembering what it was like to be stuck there. (Even £1m wouldn't get me to consider a return trip.)
Like Rosianna, I lied to my diary or rather I lied to myself and put it down on paper. Now I force myself, mostly successfully, to write honestly and scribble down whatever I want to. Every time I read more recent entries I'm surprised by how young I sound. It's a straight to page feelings splurge without any polish. There aren't any planned metaphors or symbols or anything to make the writing itself particularly readable to anyone but me. Ultimately, that's what my diaries are for now. The current me, releasing feelings in a place where there is no one, unless I'm mean to myself, to judge them.
- Ayomide
Thursday, 1 May 2014
BEDM?
I like writing. Also, falling asleep while watching TV (I'm still a teenager I swear), listening to podcasts on the bus, barbeque sauce over ketchup, and apparently extreme procrastination. Give me an externally imposed deadline and I'll meet it. My perfectionist self is too scared of failing to meet expectations or letting people down. Watch me set up a blog and I'll update it every...well, I'm writing a post right now. At best my procrastination is driven out of simple laziness relaxation optimisation. Watching the latest ep of a half hour comedy is less taxing and more instantly gratifying than starting an essay or updating this blog. At worst, and most of the time, it's driven by anxiety. Did the word perfectionist jump out at you?
Occasionally, however, I get good spurts where I get writing done while knowing there isn't someone waiting on my email. Where I do things that I know are ultimately more rewarding than spending an hour on BuzzFeed. I'm in one right now. I'm even spending less time on tumblr in favour of reading Americanah. (Obviously, it helps that it's a fantastic book.) The only problem is maintaining these spurts. They don't come around often enough for me to rely on them. Eventually the itch, the I-must-write-and-apply-for-jobs-and-try-to-eat-healthily feeling goes away. It takes to work to sustain things and I'm hoping that I'll finally get into the habit of being consistent.
Recently, I completed VEDA (aka vlog every day in April.) You can find a playlist here. I created a video! Everyday (minus two) for a month! The drive to put up a video every single day or I won't complete this took on the role of my externally imposed deadline. A ton of other things helped too, for example I have a wonderful audience so I get the reward of reading their comments and knowing that people like something I've made. Also, for the sake of being honest, for me making a video tends to take less concentration than writing. Plus, I hadn't made a video in a while and it's accepted, because it's impossible to do it any other way, that people put up videos that aren't their best work during VEDA. I'm still feeling pretty chuffed with myself, which means it's time to try BEDM.
Originally, Vlog Every Day in April was Blog Every Day. Since I'm still riding on the wave of VEDA success I'm going to try and blog everyday this month. Unfortunately, BEDM doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Also, the unedited, one take videos that I sometimes relied on during VEDA aren't possible in blog format. But, even if I end up posting half arsed haikus I'm going to try it. It's time for my all or nothing mentality to engage. Since getting lots of practice through writing for my student paper this year and generally being more in control of my anxiety, I find writing less stressful. My enjoyment of it isn't overshadowed as much. I'm actually excited. It'll be fun to see the range of posts I put up and figure out if I can find a theme for this blog.
See you tomorrow,
Ayomide
Occasionally, however, I get good spurts where I get writing done while knowing there isn't someone waiting on my email. Where I do things that I know are ultimately more rewarding than spending an hour on BuzzFeed. I'm in one right now. I'm even spending less time on tumblr in favour of reading Americanah. (Obviously, it helps that it's a fantastic book.) The only problem is maintaining these spurts. They don't come around often enough for me to rely on them. Eventually the itch, the I-must-write-and-apply-for-jobs-and-try-to-eat-healthily feeling goes away. It takes to work to sustain things and I'm hoping that I'll finally get into the habit of being consistent.
Recently, I completed VEDA (aka vlog every day in April.) You can find a playlist here. I created a video! Everyday (minus two) for a month! The drive to put up a video every single day or I won't complete this took on the role of my externally imposed deadline. A ton of other things helped too, for example I have a wonderful audience so I get the reward of reading their comments and knowing that people like something I've made. Also, for the sake of being honest, for me making a video tends to take less concentration than writing. Plus, I hadn't made a video in a while and it's accepted, because it's impossible to do it any other way, that people put up videos that aren't their best work during VEDA. I'm still feeling pretty chuffed with myself, which means it's time to try BEDM.
Originally, Vlog Every Day in April was Blog Every Day. Since I'm still riding on the wave of VEDA success I'm going to try and blog everyday this month. Unfortunately, BEDM doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Also, the unedited, one take videos that I sometimes relied on during VEDA aren't possible in blog format. But, even if I end up posting half arsed haikus I'm going to try it. It's time for my all or nothing mentality to engage. Since getting lots of practice through writing for my student paper this year and generally being more in control of my anxiety, I find writing less stressful. My enjoyment of it isn't overshadowed as much. I'm actually excited. It'll be fun to see the range of posts I put up and figure out if I can find a theme for this blog.
See you tomorrow,
Ayomide
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