Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 243

The Joyless Pop-Star Freakout of 2016

When Rihanna dropped “Work,” her charmingly monotonous single about sweating for success, I wrote that she should be considered pop music’s goddess of money. I may have to revise that statement. Later that same day, the streaming platform Tidal accidentally uploaded Rihanna’s long-awaited album Anti onto the Internet, kicking off a frenzy of illegal file sharing. The woman who recently made clear that if you mess with her finances your wife will be kidnapped and you will end up with a suitcase full of blood responded by tweeting out a free download code.

Huh? What happened to “all I see is dollar signs”? Is Rihanna feeling the Bern? Surely the wife of Tidal’s CEO isn’t being held for ransom right now.

It’s probably best to think about Anti’s carefree, socialistic launch as part of a larger demonstration of power and wealth. At 27, Rihanna doesn’t need anyone else’s coins anymore. Nor, apparently, does she need hits. As its title hints, Anti is an act of refusal. She will not be providing any more songs for spin classes. She will not stand by as critics label her a mere creator of product. She will glower and wail as the public thoughtfully nods, impressed by pop’s latest lightweight-to-heavyweight transformation.

In what’s probably a coincidence, Anti has poached attention from another pop fixture’s attempted rebellion against expectations this week. Sia’s new album This Is Acting actually is meant to be a collection of spin-class jams—but also an exposé of how the modern song machine works. It’s an anti-Anti in sound, but somewhat akin in its intentions. Taken together, the two albums suggest that even pop stars are getting worn out by the industry they’ve profited from and the culture they’ve shaped. They also, in their mediocrity, offer a reminder that self-awareness is a lot easier to achieve than a good pop song.

* * *

By ditching the sonic signifiers that made her popular in favor of something thicker and more complex, Rihanna joins a tradition that goes back at least to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Beyoncé is probably the last artist to successfully pull this kind of move off (though, before you hit “comment,” know that I’m not trying to equate any of these titles in quality). In fact, Beyoncé’s self-titled 2013 album has a lot in common with Anti in that it tamped down the expected dosage of fingernapping fun to instead offer Halloween atmospherics and nap-time BPMs. But Pet Sounds had “God Only Knows,” “Sloop John B” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” Beyoncé had “Partition,” “Drunk In Love,” and “Flawless.” The early contender for Anti’s best song, “Kiss It Better,” would rank among the second tier of Guns ‘N’ Roses ballads.

As with many splashy left-turn albums from pop acts, Anti’s production is an achievement: the result of experimental impulses executed with all the studio firepower money can buy. The mix is very loud—I’ve had to hit pause and rest my old ears a few times while listening—but the volume helps when appreciating the low-end on songs like “Consideration” and “Desperado,” where you can imagine watching the bass strings vibrate in slo-mo on a 3D IMAX screen. The jazzy synth noodling for the interlude “James Joint” may still sound futuristic in 2116. “Woo” joins a trend toward confrontational atonality in recent hip-hop and R&B—thank you Yeezus—but somehow the song’s stabby noises are even more frightening than anyone else’s. Throughout, Rihanna’s voice has never been more magnificent—texturally scuffed up but able to hit big notes.

The album  is about how badass it is to take your own way. If Rihanna doesn’t seem to be enjoying the trip, what’s the point?

Also impressive are Rihanna’s intentions in rounding up a forward-thinking set of producers and songwriters to create a cohesive statement about defying expectations. The excellent opener, “Consideration,” has Rihanna using a loopy, bewitching melody to disarm her critics: “I got to do things my own way, darling, will you ever let me? Will you ever respect me? No.” On songs like “Desperado,” she’s looking for a partner in love who will also be her partner in nonconformity; the tabloid reader’s impression will be that she’s referring to her boyfriend Travi$ Scott, the rapper who reportedly encouraged Rihanna to keep tinkering on Anti. And the easiest explanation for why she has a six-minute karaoke cover of a stupendous psych-rock track from Tame Impala’s 2015 album is that its first verse encapsulates her Anti mentality perfectly:

I can just hear them now

“How could you let us down?”

But they don’t know what I found

Or see it from this way around

But admiring how Anti sounds and what Anti says is not the same as loving the songs. “Work” stands out from the rest because of its uptempo beat and clear interest in delivering a hook, but it’s in line with the rest of the album in how it coasts on one good idea, declining opportunities to develop, transform, or even really circle back to offer a sense of completion. DJ Mustard’s “Needed Me” is another act of self sabotage, with attitude-packed verses—“Didn’t they tell you that I was a savage / Fuck your white horse and a carriage”—that give way to a tiresome moan of a chorus.

Sometimes the leave-it-unfinished approach works, as on the silky comedown of “Yeah, I Said It” or in the desperately sad, sonically diverse closing trio of ballads. Mostly, though, the refusal to offer moments of joy or transcendence feels like a miscalculation. This is an album about how badass it is to take your own way. If Rihanna doesn’t seem to be enjoying the trip, what’s the point?

* * *

Of course, transcendence comes cheap in pop music, and Sia Furler has been one of the best sellers of it for years. The hallmark of the 40-year-old’s career as a Billboard 100 songwriter has been anthems about overcoming that you can both belt along with and dance to. Switch on This Is Acting to binge on her incredible, smoky voice mumbling about adversity in verses and then surging in the chorus, using blunt metaphors about birds set free or people come alive.

But the most fascinating thing about this album is not the music it contains but the story it’s been sold with. The title refers to the fact that Sia’s a total mercenary; when she writes these wrenching tunes, she does it by imagining herself as an A-list pop star in need of their next hit. Indeed, we’ve been told that almost every song here was offered to someone else—Adele, Beyoncé, and yes, Rihanna—but each one was declined. So Sia decided to sing them herself and see whether they’d catch on.

She explained all of this and more in a Rolling Stone interview that is essential reading for its small, frank details about what it’s like to make a living off of trying to guess what Shakira or Katy Perry might want to sing about next. Contrary to all the coverage that portrayed John Seabrook’s lovely, explanatory 2015 nonfiction book The Song Machine as some sort of investigative-journalistic revelation, pop fans have long known about Max Martin, who’s written nearly as many No. 1 hits as John Lennon or Paul McCartney. They are familiar with the fact that Sia penned “Diamonds” and “Pretty Hurts.” They get that part of what makes Anti radical is that Rihanna didn’t use songs from either of the above songwriters. But they haven’t ever been confronted with something quite like This Is Acting: an industry hack showing her work, with no stated aspirations to profundity.

Two years ago, when she was just becoming a household name, Sia acted slightly less cavalier about her intentions. She said that her breakout solo single, the modern classic “Chandelier,” was inspired by her own struggles with alcoholism. Other challenges in life, supposedly, informed the record it came off of, 1,000 Forms of Fear. Listening to that album remains a highly emotional experience. The opposite is true for This Is Acting, which presents her volcanic choruses in the most generic context possible. The songs where Sia is singing about nightlife or where she’s channeling Destiny’s Child do in fact feel like acting—poor acting. And the production is so straightforward as to make the tunes interchangeable: Oh another anthem with military drums and echoing piano, how nice.

So Sia’s gone in one direction, toward radical ordinariness, to deflate pop’s pretenses toward meaning. Rihanna’s gone in the other, to show that someone widely considered pop’s most easily commodified voice actually has something to say. It would be mean-spirited to tell either of them to go back to their lane. But to wish they’d blended their approaches a bit—that some of Sia’s science pepped up Rihanna’s soul, or that some of Rihanna’s sonic creativity influenced Sia’s predetermined palette—is not to wish for compromise. It’s to wish for the very magic that can make pop music great art.

Thirty-Six Days Underground

The sad saga of a Chinese mine that collapsed on Christmas Day ended on Friday evening after four miners were rescued after 36 days underground. The four men were the only survivors of the 29 workers who were trapped following the disaster.

Hundreds of workers were involved in the rescue operation, which involved tunneling toward the men and weeks of sending water and food down to them through a narrow borehole.

A special capsule was built to retrieve the men, resembling the method used to extract the 33 miners who spent 69 days underground in Chile in 2010, but on Friday evening, the men simply attached themselves to a harness that was lowered to them.

#Breaking: Second of four surviving miners rescued in Pingyi, E #China's Shandong. pic.twitter.com/Thc1uf6qPV

— People's Daily,China (@PDChina) January 29, 2016

The mine collapse, as the BBC noted, “was so violent that it registered at China's earthquake monitoring center.” The owner of the mine, Ma Congbo, also took his own life shortly after the incident.

State Workers in Flint Got Clean Water Over a Year Ago

As the residents of Flint, Michigan, continue to rely on the private sector to help temporarily undo the injury of Flint’s water crisis, the insults keep coming.

According to documents obtained by Progress Michigan on Thursday, state employees in Flint were provided coolers filled with bottled water in January of 2015 as concerns continued grew about the quality of the water there.

Progress Michigan

The notice above was issued months before the earliest notes first showed that state officials were aware of a problem. Six months later, in July, Dennis Muchmore, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s former chief of staff, wrote an email to a health official in which he expressed frustration that Flint residents “are basically getting blown off by us” over their concerns about the water. That was still two months before a lead advisory was issued in Flint after researchers found high lead levels in the residents’ bloodstreams.

As Bryce Covert at ThinkProgress notes, only then were residents “told not to drink the water and a public health emergency was declared by the Genesee County Health Department in October.” As we noted earlier, the city of Flint issued a state of emergency in December.

It wasn’t until earlier this month—over a year after the sending of bottled water to state employees had been approved—that Snyder also declared a state of emergency for Flint. While blame for the crisis has been abundant, much of it has fallen on Snyder’s office since he appointed Flint’s emergency managers. Calls for comment to Snyder’s office about the release of documents on Thursday were not immediately returned.

A Blow to Daily Fantasy Sports in Hawaii

Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin on Wednesday became the latest to issue a formal opinion that classifies daily fantasy sports as illegal gambling under state law. With this opinion, the Aloha State joins New York, Illinois, Texas, and Nevada in challenging the industry dominated by sites like FanDuel and DraftKings.

“Gambling generally occurs under Hawaii law when a person stakes or risks something of value upon a game of chance or upon any future contingent event not under the person’s control,” Chin said in a statement. “The technology may have changed, but the vice has not.”

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The statement differentiates daily fantasy-sports contests from “traditional fantasy leagues” or “social gambling,” which is legal in Hawaii, citing the huge number of people and amount of money at play in daily fantasy sports. The opinion comes at the request of state Senator Rosalyn Baker, and does not mean that fantasy sports betting in Hawaii will stop immediately. It opens the door for civil or criminal enforcement as has happened in other states, but the department of the attorney general is still deciding what step to take next.

As Matt Ford reported in October, daily fantasy-sports contests are considered games of skill under federal law, a classification that preserves the legality of FanDuel and DraftKings, but individual states can ban the sites. Fantasy-sports contests run as a business are currently illegal in Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, and Washington, again distinct from “social gambling” with a small group of friends for a small amount of money.

The attorneys general in New York, Illinois, and Texas have issued opinions similar to Chin’s. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued DraftKings and FanDuel in November after the two companies refused to stop operating in New York. He recently amended the suit to include a clause that would require the companies to give back the money they have made in the state to customers who lost, as well as pay a fine. The companies continue to argue that fantasy sports is a game of skill. “The attorney general’s revised complaint reveals that the attorney general’s office still does not understand fantasy sports,” a lawyer for DraftKings said in a statement to The New York Times.

In Nevada, a gambling mecca, the Gaming Control Board has ruled that fantasy sports constitute gambling, and has ordered sites to obtain proper licensing in order to operate. Ford writes, however, that “the sites are unlikely to seek those licenses because it could weaken their efforts to persuade other jurisdictions that fantasy-sports games are games of skill, and not games of chance.”

Ongoing legal fights like that in New York, and now potential other states, put the business model of this multibillion-dollar industry in jeopardy. According to the Reverend Richard McGowan, an associate professor of economics at Boston College who has specialized in gambling research, the likely path forward for these companies is a state-by-state struggle to work around existing regulations. But even for such wealthy companies, compounding legal battles could prove tough.

You, Me and the Apocalypse: Yawning Toward Mass Extinction

The glut of post-apocalyptic storytelling in TV and film, from The Walking Dead to The Hunger Games to The Last Man on Earth, is growing old. Judging from most of these works, there are only so many original ways to imagine the world after some catastrophe. But after 10 minutes of NBC’s new series You, Me and the Apocalypse, I was begging for the meteor to hit. It opens on an underground bunker as the world is about to end, then flashes back to explain how its various occupants got there. Trust me, though: You’re not going to care.

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The show, produced by NBC and Britain’s cable juggernaut Sky 1, is the latest miniseries “event” that promises a star-studded cast and a story free from the status quo of most television. Here, the world can end without the studio worrying about what season two is going to look like. But its creator, Iain Hollands, whose only other credit is the little-seen U.K. show Beaver Falls, has instead set up an intricate series of plot dominoes to try and explain how a Catholic nun working for the Vatican, a prison inmate from California, and a mild-mannered Brit (among others) have ended up together, awaiting the end of the world. The show’s best sequence are its opening minutes, when the main characters watch news broadcasts showing a meteor hurtling towards the Atlantic Ocean. Everything else is infuriating delayed gratification.  

For a British co-production, You, Me and the Apocalypse is surprisingly dismissive of the the venerable Oxford comma. Otherwise, its transatlantic flaws are rather telling, particularly the plot revolving around Rhonda MacNeil (Jenna Fischer), a mild-mannered librarian sent to jail for hacking the NSA. Hollands’s grasp on the American prison system seems drawn from some distracted viewing of Orange Is the New Black: Rhonda’s experience as an inmate amounts to being threatened by Latina gang-bangers and protected by a white supremacist with a Southern accent (Megan Mullally).

Fischer’s entire character beat amounts to “A middle-class white lady in prison: Imagine that!” Which gives you a sense of the nuance You, Me and the Apocalypse deploys as it slowly gathers its disparate ensemble, who are scattered across the globe but will somehow end up together in a bunker in Slough, England (the dreary suburban setting for the original The Office). The show’s other big star is Rob Lowe, playing a Catholic priest who smokes cigarettes and curses (again: Imagine that!). You, Me and the Apocalypse seems impressed with just how scandalous all of its storylines are, but it’s still airing on NBC. There’s nothing really transgressive going on here, just a curdled impression of far darker works, down to the drawn-on swastika on Mullally’s forehead.

The series counts down the 34 days before the end of the world. There are brief flash-forwards, narrated by the main character Jamie (Mathew Baynton), who keeps asking the audience if they want to know just how he got in such a sticky situation. “Not really!” I wanted to reply. More interesting is the question of how things play out once everyone’s in the bunker together, especially since so much of the show is concerned with characters who are either trying to prevent the meteor strike or get to safety. Viewers know from the opening minutes just where everyone ends up, and that the meteor is seconds from hitting the planet. So why waste an entire series trying to distract viewers from what they already know? The in medias res opening on TV is annoying at the best of times, but it’s usually resolved within one episode, not 10.

There are some twists that promise to play out along the way, mostly revolving around the fact that Jamie, a sad-sack bank manager still recovering from the disappearance of his wife, apparently has an evil twin brother who’s the world’s most notorious hacker. You, Me and the Apocalypse is curiously obsessed with hacking for a show whose endgame is a world with no Internet, but the frequent references to the NSA and state secrets seem as half-baked as Rhonda’s stay in prison or Rob Lowe’s fanciful Vatican adventures (which are concerned with the apocalypse’s relation to the Book of Revelation).

There may not have ever been a good show buried in all these misfiring elements, but even so, Hollands has picked a poor way to tell his story. As his characters trip and stumble toward an obvious conclusion, what should be an epic event series feels like a chore—and a waste of the generally strong talent involved. Here’s a suggestion: Next time, just blow the earth up in the first five minutes and start from there. Maybe it’s hacky, but the story would at least have what You, Me and the Apocalypse is missing most of all: suspense.

A Debate Without The Donald?

The Republican Party will begin its seventh and final pre-Iowa debate the same way it began its first: obsessed over Donald Trump and his hijacking of the GOP’s presidential primary.

The only difference is that when the candidates gather in Des Moines on Thursday night, the loudest elephant probably won’t be in the room. With his typical grandiosity, Trump has pulled out of the debate because of a spat with Fox News, the channel televising the event. Yet while he’s announced plans to hold a competing rally and benefit to support wounded veterans, no one would be surprised if Trump made a dramatic, last-minute, or even mid-debate entrance, announcing a “deal” that only he could strike.

Trump is correct about one thing: Without the front-runner there, the debate loses some of its luster. Will Fox show an empty podium in the middle of the stage? (The network says no.) Will the moderators—including Trump target Megyn Kelly—kick things off by giving his opponents a free opportunity to attack and mock his absence? (Prediction: Yes) Will a slip in the event’s television ratings prove Trump right about his outsized influence on the debates? (Prediction: Also yes.)

No matter how many viewers tune out, a Trump-less debate offers an opportunity for most of his rivals, who at this point in the race are mainly vying to finish a strong third or fourth in Iowa to propel themselves forward in New Hampshire and beyond. The exception is Ted Cruz, the Republican who stands to lose the most because of Trump’s absence. He’ll miss the chance to go toe-to-toe with the one man above him in the polls and recover some of the ground he lost to Trump since the last debate. Cruz might also become more of a target for contenders like Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush. They know they’ll need to knock off Cruz before they can get to Trump, although the Texan’s strong debating skills make that a challenging task.

Cruz, meanwhile, has been the most aggressive in attacking Trump for his pre-debate antics. Launching a web page and fund-raising drive dubbed “ducking Donald,” Cruz has turned to the time-honored tradition of challenging the frontrunner to a one-on-one, Lincoln-Douglas-style debate—which Trump has predictably rejected unless and until he and Cruz are the last men standing in the field.

Thursday’s 9 p.m. debate marks a return to the main stage for Rand Paul after Fox Business Network excluded him from the last contest two weeks ago. And this may be the last debate to feature an undercard event, since ABC News has already nixed the warm-up round for next week’s debate in New Hampshire. That means the end is probably near for Mike Huckabee, Carly Fiorina, and Rick Santorum. And it’s now or never for Jim Gilmore, the long-ago Virginia governor who is, yes, still running for president despite having appeared only in a single GOP undercard debate back in August. Thanks to the departures of George Pataki, Lindsey Graham, and Bobby Jindal, Gilmore has surged to one percent in the polls—just enough to snag a spot in the undercard debate. He’ll get credit for persistence, if nothing else.

Trump’s curveball and the timing of the early debate also provide an unexpected opportunity for the trailing candidates: Both Huckabee and Santorum reportedly plan to attend his benefit for wounded veterans, taking advantage of some added screen time and the chance to appeal to a military crowd. (Not all veterans’ groups are appreciative of Trump’s move, however, with some calling it a stunt.) In Huckabee’s case, the joint event with Trump could be a prelude to an endorsement if he doesn’t surprise in Iowa on Monday night.

The prime-time debate, meanwhile, should offer at least a brief glimpse at what the Republican presidential race might have looked like had Trump not upended it with his entry. Devoid of his dominating personality, perhaps the match-up will be more substantive. Cruz and Rubio can continue their fierce debate over immigration policy, while Paul’s presence could again expand the discussion over national security, privacy, and foreign policy. Ben Carson might not sound so quiet without Trump there to drown him out. Kasich and Bush have shown blips of strength recently in New Hampshire: Can they recapture voters’ attention now that they won’t be baited into fights with Trump?

In one way, Trump’s decision to skip the debate is a typical frontrunner’s move. There’s only a few days left until the caucuses, and he wants to run out the clock. His opponents can wail all they want, but Trump’s participation in the six previous debates and his constant accessibility to the media make it hard to argue he’s hiding or afraid. This being Trump, it’s the pretext that presents the most risk: His ranting about Megyn Kelly and then his bickering with Roger Ailes over an insult-laden Fox statement made him seem thin-skinned. Yet this, too, is the very reason for his success so far. The debate is all about Trump, even when he’s off the stage.

How Is the Wounded Warrior Project Spending Its Money?

The Wounded Warrior Project’s stated mission is “To foster the most successful, well-adjusted generation of wounded service members in our nation's history.” But a series of reports allege that Wounded Warrior’s true goals are to foster a successful image and well-compensated employees.

According to new investigations from The New York Times and CBS News, former employees accuse the company of spending lavishly on perks for employees, including travel, conferences, hotels, and dinners.

"You're using our injuries, our darkest days, our hardships, to make money. So you can have these big parties," Army Staff Sergeant Erick Millette, a former WWP public speaker, told CBS News. "Going to a nice fancy restaurant is not team building. Staying at a lavish hotel at the beach here in Jacksonville, and requiring staff that lives in the area to stay at the hotel is not team building.”

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These are not the first reports to take issue with WWP. The Daily Beast’s Tim Mak has been reporting on the group for years. Mak reported on concerns that WWP was ineffective and that it was something of a bully within the circle of veterans’-charity groups. But WWP also earns a solid rating from Charity Navigator, which ranks charities on metrics include transparency and effectiveness.

The group says it provides a variety of services to veterans, helping them readjust to civilian life, providing assistance in recovering from injuries, and aiding them in finding jobs. Leading brands and figures have participated in events like the Soldier Ride, including President Obama.

The new reports come just as the charity is playing a walk-on role in another news story: Donald Trump’s boycott of Thursday’s Republican debate. Trump is holding a rival event, with proceeds to go to veterans’ groups; his campaign mentioned WWP as a recipient, but it’s unclear whether that’s really the case. He previously demanded that CNN give $5 million to WWP or other groups as a fee for debating, though he later backed down. Trump’s own personal history of support for veterans is, The Daily Beast’s Michael Daly points out, somewhat checkered.

But WWP’s critics say its history of support for veterans is also somewhat checkered. The group was formed in 2003 by John Melia, a Marine veteran wounded in Somalia in 1992. It’s now enormous—WWP brought in $372 million in 2015. Many of its donations come from small donors eager to thank veterans. Everyone seems to agree that at one time, WWP was good at that. The critics charge that things went wrong around 2009, when Melia left, apparently after a power struggle with CEO Steve Nardizzi.

That’s when WWP started doing things like hosting a four-day, $3 million conference in Colorado for its 500 staff members. Many staffers spoke to the Times and CBS to criticize wasteful spending.

Nardizzi says the spending is essential to keep fundraising strong and and achieve WWP’s goals. “I look at companies like Starbucks—that’s the model,” he told the Times. “You’re looking at companies that are getting it right, treating their employees right, delivering great services and great products, then are growing the brand to support all of that.” Nardizzi made $473,000 in 2014.

Fighting the Zika Virus

The World Health Organization and other national health agencies are warning that the current Zika virus outbreak is likely to spread throughout nearly all the Americas. Alerts are being issued warning of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, carrier of the Zika virus which might cause microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome, a condition that causes the immune system to attack one’s own nerves. Last year, there was a sharp increase in the number of babies born with microcephaly, in parts of Brazil affected by the Zika virus (2,700 newborns affected in 2015, compared to fewer than 150 in 2014.) The condition results in an abnormally small head in newborns and is associated with various disorders including decreased brain development. Zika has now spread to every country in the Americas, except Chile and Canada—with at least a dozen cases in the United States confirmed by the CDC. While research is being done to verify the link between Zika and microcephaly, authorities in several countries have advised couples to avoid pregnancy for the time being.

Barbie’s Hips Don’t Lie

Barbie began her life as, essentially, a glorified sex toy. She—it’s fair, given her influence over her gender and her culture, to refer to her as “she”—is modeled on a mid-century German doll and comic-book figure named Lilli. Sassy and buxom, Lilli was euphemistically prostitute-like, fond of breezy phrases like “I could do without balding old men, but my budget couldn’t!” and, “The sunrise is so beautiful that I always stay late at the nightclub to see it!” Her doll—cartoonishly curvaceous, in the traditional manner of women-designed-by-men—was, in the mid-20th century, often given out as a joke at bachelor parties and similar gatherings. A funny thing ended up happening with those jokey, sex-infused pieces of plastic, though: Kids began to play with them. Girls, in particular. They liked dressing Lilli up. They liked grooming her hair. They liked imagining that, one day, they would be—they would look—like her.

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It’s that impulse of small humans—to treat dolls as vehicles not just of amusement, but of aspiration—that makes today’s news such a big deal. Barbie, the doll that the Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler modeled after Lilli and introduced at the World’s Fair in 1959, will now come in a variety of shapes and shades. (And also: a variety of hairstyles, and eye colors, and “face sculpts.”) The doll will still be fairly cartoonish—this is Barbie, after all—but, from today, she can be bought in sizes “petite” and “tall” and “curvy.” (The terms, Time notes—the English euphemisms, as well as their translations into other languages—were extensively debated by Mattel marketing executives.) She can also, just as importantly, be bought in seven different skin tones.

Which is to say that Barbie—that singular figure who has always carried pretensions toward broader cultural representation—is becoming, finally, more diverse. She is, in her highly limited way, trying to do a better job of representing the people who play with her. And a better job, at the same time, of affecting who those people will become.

This was that oldest and most American of things: cultural change by way of capitalism.  

That is, in its small way, big news. And good news! But the best news of all might just be the specific reasons Mattel has offered for the changes. To transform Barbie’s body—to expand its offerings to include shapes and shades that more closely resemble the storied “Average American Woman”—was, after all, a large logistical challenge for the company. It required Mattel to create whole new sets of clothes to accommodate the dolls’ body shapes. It required, even, the creation of new shoes that would accommodate wider feet.

Mattel did not make those changes, necessarily, because it wanted to be a moral leader, Time’s Eliana Dockterman notes. It did so instead as part of a cynical business calculation—the kind of cynical business calculation any good company is expected to make on behalf of itself and its shareholders. The changes in Barbie’s body may have arisen out of the company’s desire to do good; mostly, though, they arose from its need to do well. This was that oldest and most American of things: cultural change by way of capitalism.  

It went like this: Mattel’s sales of its Barbie dolls have, recently, been plummeting. (They dropped 20 percent between 2012 and 2014, Dockterman reports, and continued their slide last year.) This is in part because Disney recently awarded its Princess business to Hasbro, taking that merchandise away from Mattel during The Age of Elsa. Also, though, the dive has to do with shifts taking place in the culture at large. Via broad demographic changes, and also via the various serendipities of celebrity, Hollywood and the media have been expanding their sense of the “ideal” feminine form. Waifs may still be prominent on catwalks and red carpets, but so are curvaceous women like Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian and Christina Hendricks and Amy Schumer. White women may be prominent in advertising and television and movies, but so, increasingly, are women like Lupita N’yongo and Gina Rodriguez and Maggie Q. Under their influence, and under the influence of a culture that so often equates progress with prestige, “traditional” beauty ideals have become boring beauty ideals.

In that sense, Barbie—as a cultural symbol, and as a commercial product—had to change. Ruth Handler may have designed the doll, in the 1950s, to be a progressive alternative to the baby doll, thereby expanding girls’ vision of what their roles might be; what she also designed, however, was an impossible standard that would endure for generations. Barbie represented, from the outset, the freight of femininity. She represented the awkward disconnect between cultural expectation and physical reality. (That waist! Those hips! Those perma-heeled feet!)

And as the women’s movement arose—as feminism dissolved, quickly, into the culture at large—Barbie came to symbolize a tension between empowerment and subjugation. She came to be seen, by many commentators but also by many parents, as not only quaintly antiquated, but also potentially damaging. And no company, of course, wants the purchase of their toys to become a matter of moral anxiety to their customers. Evelyn Mazzocco, Time notes, who heads the Barbie brand for Mattel, keeps a board behind her desk dotted with customer criticisms of the traditional Barbie doll. It includes phrases like “not diverse,” “materialistic,” and “out of touch.”

The varied-shaped and varied-shaded Barbies are Mattel’s attempt to make things right—with history, yes, but also with their shareholders.

So the varied-shaped and varied-shaded new Barbies are part of Mattel’s attempt to make things right—with history, yes, but also with their shareholders. That the company may be able to do both at once is both revealing and encouraging. It would be churlish to compare a plastic doll to the broader discussions taking place across the culture right now—conversations about diversity, and representation, and inclusion. Barbie is not a culture. Barbie is not a system. Barbie is not a series of decisions, tiny on their own yet determinative taken together, about who gets to participate, and be seen, and be heard.

In a very small way, though, Barbie is all of those things. Toys, after all—the objects we invite into children’s lives to entertain them and also to shape them—reflect society’s highest aspirations for itself. They’re the way we teach the littlest humans what will be expected of them, and hoped for them, when they get bigger: bravery (G.I. Joe), curiosity (Dora the Explorer), creativity (Legos), empathy (Elsa), beauty (Barbie). They’re myths, in the form of objects. They’re lessons. They’re proxies. They’re the reason that toymakers, recently, have gone out of their way to send the “right” messages, both to kids and the adults who are buying things on their behalf.

Mattel’s expansion of Barbie’s look, in that sense, represents the basic, hopeful idea that diversity is valuable not just for diversity’s sake (or, as Anna Holmes recently put it, as a kind of grudging obligation). Diversity is—much more pragmatically, much more transformatively—good business. If consumers can see themselves in their dolls, Mattel has calculated, they will be more likely to purchase those dolls. The company is taking a note from the American Girl dolls, which long ago realized that diversity is good business. And it is suggesting a path for Hollywood, and for the rest of us—one that allows “doing well” and “doing good” to complement, rather than conflict with, each other. Mattel is doing what capitalism, at its best, will do: transforming cynical self-interest into cultural progress.

Taking Literature to the Streets

In 2013, an employee at Minneapolis’s Coffee House Press opened the day’s mail to find an unexpected delivery: 10,000 coffee sleeves promoting the television show Portlandia. The show’s network, IFC, had made the not uncommon mistake of assuming that the independent publishing company was actually a java joint, and was taking the opportunity to offer up some self-promotional freebies. But the mixup sparked an idea—using the guerrilla marketing tools beloved by bigger brands to promote literature.

Reading, one of the world’s most enduring pastimes, hasn’t historically needed clever ads or flashy marketing campaigns to convince people of its worth. But Coffee Sleeves Conversation, as the Coffee House Press project became known, is one of a number of growing efforts around the world to advertise literature as a whole—by taking the message that reading can be accessible, enjoyable, and life-improving to unexpected places, from vending machines and subway cars to fast-food chains.

“It’s a way of putting literature in a public space and giving people a literary experience that isn’t reading a book,” says Caroline Casey, Coffee House Press’s managing director. “You don’t know how people will experience what’s on the sleeve but you know that they will experience it.” The company decided to print excerpts of poetry and prose written by local writers of color on 10,000 coffee sleeves, which it will distribute around the St. Paul area. For Casey, the project is a way to create complexity and visibility, as well as to help break down preconceived notions about literature’s elitism.

The same kind of thinking can be found in programs like London’s Poems on the Underground. The project, which turns 30 this year, features poetry on the walls of Tube cars, and has been copied in many cities across the U.S. including New York, with the now-defunct initiatives Poetry in Motion and Train of Thought. In London, the only requirement for the selected poems is that they fit within the limits of an advertising space. Poems on the Underground’s founder, Judith Chernaik, has described the program as “an implicit contradiction of the assumption that poetry is an elitist art,” stating that “the tube poems are popular because they offer an escape from the combined pressures of advertising and daily work. They invite the traveller to share the dreams and visions of another human being, speaking across time and place.”

Newer projects, Coffee Sleeve Conversation among them, focus less on traditional ad spaces and instead mimic the tactics used by guerrilla marketing, an idea pioneered by Jay Conrad Levinson in 1984. The strategy relies upon imagination rather than a big budget to advertise a product, and emphasizes the unconventional and unexpected to make a bigger impact. Earlier this year, the publisher Short Edition installed eight short-story vending machines in the city of Grenoble, France—to read a short story, free of charge, pedestrians press buttons indicating story length, and then the machine prints out one of 600 available stories. In Argentina, the artist Raul Lemesoff constructed a “weapon of mass instruction,” a 1979 Ford Falcon modified into a military-style “book tank” with exterior shelves that could hold 900 books. In celebration of World Book Day in March 2015, Lemesoff delivered books to citizens for free (as long as they promised to read them).

In Los Angeles, the self-described “online video literary magazine” GuerrillaReads promotes videos of writers reading their work on street corners and in public spaces rather than the “rarified atmosphere” of bookstores or libraries. And in São Paulo, the publishing company L&PM Pocket convinced people to read on the subway by giving away copies of classics such as Sherlock Holmes, The Great Gatsby, and The Art of War that also served as subway tickets, which each book allotting readers 10 free rides. The project, dubbed Ticket Books, has since been made permanent and expanded to other Brazilian cities.

Literature has what’s referred to in the marketing business as “high stopping power,” meaning it’s able to effectively capture people’s attention. “Letters and words have symbolic value to people,” says Thales Teixeira, a marketing professor at Harvard Business School. “We still as a society have some fascination with books.” The effect is amplified when literature turns up in unexpected places, like on a billboard or a grocery bag.

The Chicago-based project Poems While You Wait trades on the novelty of old-school technology by having poets take typewriters to public spaces and sell original, on-demand works to passersby for $5. The price is cheap, but project’s co-founder, Kathleen Rooney, says it’s about proving that poetry has value.

“Without being too high-minded or crusadery about it, [we want] to show people who’ve gone years without thinking about poetry that poetry can make their lives better, even in a tiny way, even in 10 minutes,” she says. And, by turning a poem into a product and using savvy marketing to attract an audience, she and her fellow poets give their customers “a social script,” a different way to interact with literature. Similar projects have sprung up in cities from Seattle to Oklahoma City, most of them with similar aims: to show people that poetry can be accessible, and even fun.

By pairing products with art and literature, customers tend to see them in a better light.

While projects like Coffee Sleeve Conversation, Ticket Books, and Poems While You Wait have idealistic intentions, they reflect literature’s power as a marketing tool, even when it comes to products you wouldn’t find in a bookstore. “Literature, and art, have a halo effect over other products and services that aren’t so aspirational,” Teixeira says. Marketers have learned that by pairing their products with art and literature, customers tend to see them in a better light, a tactic called priming.

A notable example is Chipotle’s Cultivating Thought program, which places short stories and quotes from famous authors on the fast-casual chain’s food packaging. On Wednesday, the brand announced that the second installment of the program will features writers like Amy Tan, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Neil Gaiman—helping bring the company some much-needed good PR after a spate of lawsuits regarding food-borne illnesses.

While Chipotle’s use of literature to elevate its image is self-evident, Teixeira believes even seemingly altruistic initiatives can often have more nuanced motives. Along with exposing more people to literature, projects like Poems on the Underground or Ticket Books may help distract subway riders from delays. Raul Lemesoff’s book tank was commissioned by the beverage company 7Up as part of a major rebranding campaign. Coffee Sleeve Conversation, while not necessarily publishing the press’s writers, raises the company’s visibility and positions it as a forward-thinking icon in its own community.  

Still, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “I think about it more as connecting rather than promotion,” says Bronwyn Mauldin, an author and the co-founder of GuerrillaReads. “It’s about building a community—a literary community is really at the heart of this.”