Lily Salter's Blog, page 983

No nipples required: What does Playboy’s never-nude future hold?

It’s official: beginning with Playboy’s March 2016 issue, there will be no more nude women gracing its pages, according to The New York Times. Playboy chief executive Scott Flanders explained that, essentially, the magazine founded by Hugh Hefner did such a good job making images of nude women acceptable, it’s no longer in any way taboo, illicit or even necessary to the brand. “That battle has been fought and won,” Flanders told the Times. “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.” This is not the first time Flanders has used that same p word. He told Entrepreneur in December 2014, “You could argue that nudity is a distraction for us and actually shrinks our audience rather than expands it…At the time when Hef founded the company [in 1953], nudity was provocative, it was attention-grabbing, it was unique and today it’s not. It’s passé.” As Techcrunch points out, in addition to far more explicit photos and videos being accessible at the touch of a button, nudity may be directly preventing them from growing their online audience. John Biggs wrote, “[n]one of the major carriers of online content allow porn to be sold through their stores. The Disneyfication of online markets is to be expected – nearly every content provider has come down hard on the side of non-prurience except, notably, Reddit – and when there’s money to be made in the Newsstand app (but not the physical newsstand) it makes perfect sense for magazines like Playboy to change.” Eric Spitznagel, a writer who’s conducted close to 50 interviews for Playboy, calls the move “kind of brilliant, actually. It's an acknowledgment that Playboy isn't the same thing it was 30, 20, even ten years ago.” In an email interview, the 46-year-old contrasted the appeal of the magazine in his youth to its place today. “When I was growing up in the late 70’s, early 80’s, the Playboy centerfold was necessary. It was the only place you could see adult boobies. I remember visiting a friend whose dad had a bunch of Playboys in his basement, and we went through them like spies looking for clues. It felt legitimately dangerous to be reading them, like if we were caught, we'd go to pornography jail. I was so grateful for every photo. But now, in 2015, Playboy isn't even [among] the top 20 places that teenage boys go to find pictures of naked girls.” He hopes that maybe this is a chance for the writing to truly become the magazine’s focal point and be recognized not as an afterthought, but something noteworthy in and of itself, no nipples required. “As somebody who's written a lot of interviews and articles for Playboy, there's a part of me that's really excited about this,” Spitznagel enthused. “Because every time I write something for Playboy and try to share it on social media, invariably somebody says, ‘What, you mean that magazine has articles too?’ Ha ha ha, funny, I get it, you're talking about the boobies. Yep, Playboy has lots of boobies, but also words too.” The real question is, who’s going to stick around to read them—and who will pick up the magazine for either the first time, or the first time in years? In Playboy.com’s announcement of the change, they argue that there’s room for a new incarnation of the magazine, one that draws inspiration from its online presence: “Last year we re-launched Playboy.com as a safe-for-work site and discovered something about our readers and our identity: The Bunny transcends nudity…Yes, we’re taking a risk by going non-nude, but this is a company—like all great companies—that has risk in its DNA. It was built around a magazine virtually no one thought would succeed, yet now it’s impossible (for us, anyways) to picture a world without Playboy.” But is it really? Or rather, can the magazine innovate while leaving what made its brand so iconic behind? In comments on Playboy’s Facebook page, many readers aired their disappointment over the decision. “It was fun while it lasted, this seems eerily like a ‘political correct’ move for the PC world we live in. Looks like you gave into the system you fought so hard against,” wrote one commenter, while another called it “the death of tasteful nudity.” Lux Alptraum, former editor and publisher of Fleshbot, told Salon the magazine has to figure out what it stands for, if it’s no longer riding on what she calls its “'Mad Men'-era charm.” The legacy of the bachelor with a bevy of girlfriends lifestyle that founder Hefner embodied—and still tries to—as represented in the magazine’s pages, has to evolve with the times if it’s going to succeed. “If Playboy doesn’t have nudity, what is Playboy?” asked Alptraum. “If Playboy is a magazine for men that’s smart cultural commentary, why am I going to read Playboy rather than GQ or Details or The New Yorker or The Atlantic? They’re at an advantage because people know what Playboy is and it’s a strong brand, but if they’re changing what that brand is about, it’s potentially amazing and potentially disastrous.” While Alptraum doesn’t think it was necessary that Playboy get rid of its nudes, “I understand why they did it,” she said. “Personally, I don’t think the presence or absence of naked pictures matters. Playboy is in this weird middle ground. They had the naked photos for so long because that made them edgy and different and special, and then that ceased to make them edgy and different and special. To me, the question is, what makes them special now? I think taking the nude photos out gives them the ability to compete in a more mainstream environment, but that also means they have more competitors.” When I mentioned to former Penthouse executive editor Peter Bloch, my old colleague when I was an editor at Penthouse Variations and contributing editor at Penthouse, that my first reaction to this is that it’s either a “crazy or brilliant” move on Playboy’s part, he dismissed both those options. Instead, he called it a “desperate gamble” to save the magazine, whose circulation has dwindled to 800,000 from 5.6 million in 1975, as the Times noted. “They used to have great interviews and they still do from time to time, but so does everybody else,” said Bloch. “I don’t see the rationale for somebody who hasn’t been buying Playboy to now say Oh, they don’t have the girls? Well now I’m going to buy it.” Bloch said the change could succeed, but will be an uphill battle. “It sounds like they’re going to be competing directly with GQ or maybe Esquire. To go head to head with them, it’s going to take a lot of resources and a lot of great editing. I would guess if they can get some really great innovative young photographs to do great sexy pictures that don’t have overt nudity, people might be interested in looking at them.” The Times says Playboy is eager to court the 18-30 age group, and women are certainly a part of that desired readership. Chief content officer Cory Jones told the Times they plan to run a sex column by a “’sex-positive female,’ writing enthusiastically about sex.” Last year, Jones explained to Columbia Journalism Review the worldview of its safe for work website, Playboy.com, which relaunched in August 2014: “Playboy is about being a gentleman…I think it’s very inclusive. We have had feminist writers forever; we’re extremely pro-women.” CJR pointed out, though, that Jones “declined to describe the brand as feminist in an interview.” If Playboy is trying to reach millennial women, 27-year-old writer Gaby Dunn is among their target market—young, hip, feminist and plugged in. She’s the co-star of YouTube show "Just Between Us" and has written for Playboy’s website about her fondness for dick pics. Dunn told Salon, “I'd like them to get back to the literary history they enjoyed when they had really good authors writing for them. Maybe make themselves the sex version of The New York Times Magazine.” Dunn was less impressed with their plans to try to claim a feminist-minded tone. Her advice for the magazine? “Playboy's audience today strikes me as enlightened bro, so maybe lean into that? Every magazine has a sex positive woman writing a column. If I want that content or if I want to write that content, why would I go to Playboy and be the one woman on a staff of men when I can go write the same article for a magazine that is edited by women and where I can surround myself with women writers?” As for Spitznagel, while on a personal level, he cops to being “a little sad that there'll be less boobs” in the mag, he dismisses that as pure “nostalgia” for a time that’s come and clearly gone. “I'm also sad that my 4-year-old will never know what it's like to wait an entire week to watch his favorite TV show. Saying ‘Playboy can't get rid of the naked women’ is like saying ‘My son can only watch Bugs Bunny on Saturday morning, because that's the only time I could watch it as a kid.’”It’s official: beginning with Playboy’s March 2016 issue, there will be no more nude women gracing its pages, according to The New York Times. Playboy chief executive Scott Flanders explained that, essentially, the magazine founded by Hugh Hefner did such a good job making images of nude women acceptable, it’s no longer in any way taboo, illicit or even necessary to the brand. “That battle has been fought and won,” Flanders told the Times. “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.” This is not the first time Flanders has used that same p word. He told Entrepreneur in December 2014, “You could argue that nudity is a distraction for us and actually shrinks our audience rather than expands it…At the time when Hef founded the company [in 1953], nudity was provocative, it was attention-grabbing, it was unique and today it’s not. It’s passé.” As Techcrunch points out, in addition to far more explicit photos and videos being accessible at the touch of a button, nudity may be directly preventing them from growing their online audience. John Biggs wrote, “[n]one of the major carriers of online content allow porn to be sold through their stores. The Disneyfication of online markets is to be expected – nearly every content provider has come down hard on the side of non-prurience except, notably, Reddit – and when there’s money to be made in the Newsstand app (but not the physical newsstand) it makes perfect sense for magazines like Playboy to change.” Eric Spitznagel, a writer who’s conducted close to 50 interviews for Playboy, calls the move “kind of brilliant, actually. It's an acknowledgment that Playboy isn't the same thing it was 30, 20, even ten years ago.” In an email interview, the 46-year-old contrasted the appeal of the magazine in his youth to its place today. “When I was growing up in the late 70’s, early 80’s, the Playboy centerfold was necessary. It was the only place you could see adult boobies. I remember visiting a friend whose dad had a bunch of Playboys in his basement, and we went through them like spies looking for clues. It felt legitimately dangerous to be reading them, like if we were caught, we'd go to pornography jail. I was so grateful for every photo. But now, in 2015, Playboy isn't even [among] the top 20 places that teenage boys go to find pictures of naked girls.” He hopes that maybe this is a chance for the writing to truly become the magazine’s focal point and be recognized not as an afterthought, but something noteworthy in and of itself, no nipples required. “As somebody who's written a lot of interviews and articles for Playboy, there's a part of me that's really excited about this,” Spitznagel enthused. “Because every time I write something for Playboy and try to share it on social media, invariably somebody says, ‘What, you mean that magazine has articles too?’ Ha ha ha, funny, I get it, you're talking about the boobies. Yep, Playboy has lots of boobies, but also words too.” The real question is, who’s going to stick around to read them—and who will pick up the magazine for either the first time, or the first time in years? In Playboy.com’s announcement of the change, they argue that there’s room for a new incarnation of the magazine, one that draws inspiration from its online presence: “Last year we re-launched Playboy.com as a safe-for-work site and discovered something about our readers and our identity: The Bunny transcends nudity…Yes, we’re taking a risk by going non-nude, but this is a company—like all great companies—that has risk in its DNA. It was built around a magazine virtually no one thought would succeed, yet now it’s impossible (for us, anyways) to picture a world without Playboy.” But is it really? Or rather, can the magazine innovate while leaving what made its brand so iconic behind? In comments on Playboy’s Facebook page, many readers aired their disappointment over the decision. “It was fun while it lasted, this seems eerily like a ‘political correct’ move for the PC world we live in. Looks like you gave into the system you fought so hard against,” wrote one commenter, while another called it “the death of tasteful nudity.” Lux Alptraum, former editor and publisher of Fleshbot, told Salon the magazine has to figure out what it stands for, if it’s no longer riding on what she calls its “'Mad Men'-era charm.” The legacy of the bachelor with a bevy of girlfriends lifestyle that founder Hefner embodied—and still tries to—as represented in the magazine’s pages, has to evolve with the times if it’s going to succeed. “If Playboy doesn’t have nudity, what is Playboy?” asked Alptraum. “If Playboy is a magazine for men that’s smart cultural commentary, why am I going to read Playboy rather than GQ or Details or The New Yorker or The Atlantic? They’re at an advantage because people know what Playboy is and it’s a strong brand, but if they’re changing what that brand is about, it’s potentially amazing and potentially disastrous.” While Alptraum doesn’t think it was necessary that Playboy get rid of its nudes, “I understand why they did it,” she said. “Personally, I don’t think the presence or absence of naked pictures matters. Playboy is in this weird middle ground. They had the naked photos for so long because that made them edgy and different and special, and then that ceased to make them edgy and different and special. To me, the question is, what makes them special now? I think taking the nude photos out gives them the ability to compete in a more mainstream environment, but that also means they have more competitors.” When I mentioned to former Penthouse executive editor Peter Bloch, my old colleague when I was an editor at Penthouse Variations and contributing editor at Penthouse, that my first reaction to this is that it’s either a “crazy or brilliant” move on Playboy’s part, he dismissed both those options. Instead, he called it a “desperate gamble” to save the magazine, whose circulation has dwindled to 800,000 from 5.6 million in 1975, as the Times noted. “They used to have great interviews and they still do from time to time, but so does everybody else,” said Bloch. “I don’t see the rationale for somebody who hasn’t been buying Playboy to now say Oh, they don’t have the girls? Well now I’m going to buy it.” Bloch said the change could succeed, but will be an uphill battle. “It sounds like they’re going to be competing directly with GQ or maybe Esquire. To go head to head with them, it’s going to take a lot of resources and a lot of great editing. I would guess if they can get some really great innovative young photographs to do great sexy pictures that don’t have overt nudity, people might be interested in looking at them.” The Times says Playboy is eager to court the 18-30 age group, and women are certainly a part of that desired readership. Chief content officer Cory Jones told the Times they plan to run a sex column by a “’sex-positive female,’ writing enthusiastically about sex.” Last year, Jones explained to Columbia Journalism Review the worldview of its safe for work website, Playboy.com, which relaunched in August 2014: “Playboy is about being a gentleman…I think it’s very inclusive. We have had feminist writers forever; we’re extremely pro-women.” CJR pointed out, though, that Jones “declined to describe the brand as feminist in an interview.” If Playboy is trying to reach millennial women, 27-year-old writer Gaby Dunn is among their target market—young, hip, feminist and plugged in. She’s the co-star of YouTube show "Just Between Us" and has written for Playboy’s website about her fondness for dick pics. Dunn told Salon, “I'd like them to get back to the literary history they enjoyed when they had really good authors writing for them. Maybe make themselves the sex version of The New York Times Magazine.” Dunn was less impressed with their plans to try to claim a feminist-minded tone. Her advice for the magazine? “Playboy's audience today strikes me as enlightened bro, so maybe lean into that? Every magazine has a sex positive woman writing a column. If I want that content or if I want to write that content, why would I go to Playboy and be the one woman on a staff of men when I can go write the same article for a magazine that is edited by women and where I can surround myself with women writers?” As for Spitznagel, while on a personal level, he cops to being “a little sad that there'll be less boobs” in the mag, he dismisses that as pure “nostalgia” for a time that’s come and clearly gone. “I'm also sad that my 4-year-old will never know what it's like to wait an entire week to watch his favorite TV show. Saying ‘Playboy can't get rid of the naked women’ is like saying ‘My son can only watch Bugs Bunny on Saturday morning, because that's the only time I could watch it as a kid.’”

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Good news for the Village Voice: The paper’s unlikely new 1-percent owner could invigorate the alt-press pioneer

A trio of odd developments have dropped in the world of print an online media over the last day or two, and none of the three were even conceivable five or 10 years ago. First, magazine giant Conde Nast – which publishes Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker – has bought the music website Pitchfork. Second, Playboy will no longer print photographs of nude women, conceding the role to the Internet’s ample offerings. Third, the Village Voice, the New York-based symbol of the American alternative press, has just been purchased by a man whose flagship publication is a 50,000-or-so daily newspaper in Pennsylvania’s fifth-largest city. Given the heft the Voice still occupies in the imagination of bohemians, lefties, and writers who came of age from the ‘50s through the ‘90s – as opposed to the paper’s 21st century reality -- this one may be the most startling of them all. Here’s the New York Times:

The Village Voice, the storied alternative weekly newspaper that helped usher in a new era of journalism after its creation 60 years ago, but that has been struggling to find its way in an era of declining circulations and ad revenues, was sold on Monday to a scion of one of America’s wealthiest families with a long history in newspaper publishing. Peter D. Barbey, through his investment company Black Walnut Holdings L.L.C., bought the paper from Voice Media Group, which owns a string of weeklies around the country.

Now, there are reasons to be shocked and appalled that the mighty Voice -- which once had a circulation around 250,000 – was sold to the Berks Co.-dwelling publisher of the Reading Eagle, a paper you probably haven’t heard of unless you live in southeastern Pennsylvania. How can some provincial rich guy, who comes from an old family with no apparent ties to bohemianism – you might be asking -- take over a publication that’s served as an important forum for Beats, hippies, radical feminists, early hip-hop culture, identity politics, avant-garde fiction, and lots of other stuff? But as seemingly straight as Barbey and his company may be, this is about as good an outcome for the Voice as I can imagine in 2015. Print publications of all kinds have had a tough time in the 21st century, but alternative weeklies have been especially hard hit. The demise of the record stores and video shops where people used to pick them up hasn’t helped, but it's mostly been about advertising leaving print, and the inability of these (mostly) free publications to raise their cover prices to make up for declines in ad revenues has limited their options. The Los Angeles weekly I once worked for (owned by the company that just sold the Voice) folded in 2002, and things never really got better for the field after that. During and after the economic crash, the extinctions increased, and the papers that survived got thinner. The once-robust Boston Phoenix died in 2013 after losing roughly $1 million per year. The same year, the Voice’s two leading editors resigned rather than layoff a large proportion of the staff. The collapse or shrinking of other alt-weeklies has continued on schedule; the Philadelphia City Paper printed its final issue last week. So why does the Voice news make an ink-stained wretch like me uncharacteristically hopeful? First is that the company that has owned the Voice for the last decade (once called New Times, now, confusingly, called Voice Media Group) was not quite the ideal owner. I worked with talented and serious journalists at New Times, but these guys never really got the Voice (which, admittedly, had been drifting even before the purchase.) The New Times gang let go countless gifted writers including Robert Christgau, who helped invent rock criticism. “They seemed motivated by hatred of everything the alternative press stood for,” former Voice culture-and-politcs writer Tom Carson told me when I wrote a story about trouble at the paper two years ago. “The leftwing politics, the countercultural sensibility, the value placed on intellectualism. These guys were just aggressively demolishing everything that weeklies were good for.” This is the paper that had once published Jane Jacobs writing on urbanism, Nelson George on "post-soul culture," Manohla Dargis and J. Hoberman on film, as well as pioneering work on the AIDS crisis and the rise of the paranoid right. I don’t put all the blame on the ownership; market forces were tearing the Voice, and other weeklies, apart as well. These are not likely to abate. By comparison, some dailies have had better luck through owners that do not require them to make quarter profit reports. Britain’s Guardian became the most credible source of news in the English-speaking world during the years it was owned by a trust. The Boston Globe, which almost collapsed not long ago, seems stable and healthy under the ownership of businessman John W. Henry. Whatever damage he’s done with Amazon, Jeff Bezos has in most ways been good for the Washington Post, and under his ownership that paper has hired rather than fire journalists. So when Barbey – who has been reading the paper since he was in prep school -- says he’ll invest in the Voice and bolster the staff, it’s worth taking him, for now, at his word. Can he make the paper as vital as it was in its heyday? No; the times are too different. Would it be better if publications of all kinds were supported by ad sales and paid circulation, like most of them used to be? Sure. Even with the huge number of online outlets, the Voice can still be important. At its best, the alternative press was often sharper at pop culture coverage than mainstream dailies. And while online sources cover some things well, they tend to ignore local reporting and subjects like theater, classical and experimental music, architecture, the coverage of arts institutions and other things not directly tied to celebrities and commerce. There is absolutely a need for a smart and vigorous paper, with a print and web presence, paying attention to overlooked subjects. Let’s call this unlikely purchase, then, the first good news that this decimated sector has heard in years. Readers – and writers too – could be better for it.A trio of odd developments have dropped in the world of print an online media over the last day or two, and none of the three were even conceivable five or 10 years ago. First, magazine giant Conde Nast – which publishes Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker – has bought the music website Pitchfork. Second, Playboy will no longer print photographs of nude women, conceding the role to the Internet’s ample offerings. Third, the Village Voice, the New York-based symbol of the American alternative press, has just been purchased by a man whose flagship publication is a 50,000-or-so daily newspaper in Pennsylvania’s fifth-largest city. Given the heft the Voice still occupies in the imagination of bohemians, lefties, and writers who came of age from the ‘50s through the ‘90s – as opposed to the paper’s 21st century reality -- this one may be the most startling of them all. Here’s the New York Times:

The Village Voice, the storied alternative weekly newspaper that helped usher in a new era of journalism after its creation 60 years ago, but that has been struggling to find its way in an era of declining circulations and ad revenues, was sold on Monday to a scion of one of America’s wealthiest families with a long history in newspaper publishing. Peter D. Barbey, through his investment company Black Walnut Holdings L.L.C., bought the paper from Voice Media Group, which owns a string of weeklies around the country.

Now, there are reasons to be shocked and appalled that the mighty Voice -- which once had a circulation around 250,000 – was sold to the Berks Co.-dwelling publisher of the Reading Eagle, a paper you probably haven’t heard of unless you live in southeastern Pennsylvania. How can some provincial rich guy, who comes from an old family with no apparent ties to bohemianism – you might be asking -- take over a publication that’s served as an important forum for Beats, hippies, radical feminists, early hip-hop culture, identity politics, avant-garde fiction, and lots of other stuff? But as seemingly straight as Barbey and his company may be, this is about as good an outcome for the Voice as I can imagine in 2015. Print publications of all kinds have had a tough time in the 21st century, but alternative weeklies have been especially hard hit. The demise of the record stores and video shops where people used to pick them up hasn’t helped, but it's mostly been about advertising leaving print, and the inability of these (mostly) free publications to raise their cover prices to make up for declines in ad revenues has limited their options. The Los Angeles weekly I once worked for (owned by the company that just sold the Voice) folded in 2002, and things never really got better for the field after that. During and after the economic crash, the extinctions increased, and the papers that survived got thinner. The once-robust Boston Phoenix died in 2013 after losing roughly $1 million per year. The same year, the Voice’s two leading editors resigned rather than layoff a large proportion of the staff. The collapse or shrinking of other alt-weeklies has continued on schedule; the Philadelphia City Paper printed its final issue last week. So why does the Voice news make an ink-stained wretch like me uncharacteristically hopeful? First is that the company that has owned the Voice for the last decade (once called New Times, now, confusingly, called Voice Media Group) was not quite the ideal owner. I worked with talented and serious journalists at New Times, but these guys never really got the Voice (which, admittedly, had been drifting even before the purchase.) The New Times gang let go countless gifted writers including Robert Christgau, who helped invent rock criticism. “They seemed motivated by hatred of everything the alternative press stood for,” former Voice culture-and-politcs writer Tom Carson told me when I wrote a story about trouble at the paper two years ago. “The leftwing politics, the countercultural sensibility, the value placed on intellectualism. These guys were just aggressively demolishing everything that weeklies were good for.” This is the paper that had once published Jane Jacobs writing on urbanism, Nelson George on "post-soul culture," Manohla Dargis and J. Hoberman on film, as well as pioneering work on the AIDS crisis and the rise of the paranoid right. I don’t put all the blame on the ownership; market forces were tearing the Voice, and other weeklies, apart as well. These are not likely to abate. By comparison, some dailies have had better luck through owners that do not require them to make quarter profit reports. Britain’s Guardian became the most credible source of news in the English-speaking world during the years it was owned by a trust. The Boston Globe, which almost collapsed not long ago, seems stable and healthy under the ownership of businessman John W. Henry. Whatever damage he’s done with Amazon, Jeff Bezos has in most ways been good for the Washington Post, and under his ownership that paper has hired rather than fire journalists. So when Barbey – who has been reading the paper since he was in prep school -- says he’ll invest in the Voice and bolster the staff, it’s worth taking him, for now, at his word. Can he make the paper as vital as it was in its heyday? No; the times are too different. Would it be better if publications of all kinds were supported by ad sales and paid circulation, like most of them used to be? Sure. Even with the huge number of online outlets, the Voice can still be important. At its best, the alternative press was often sharper at pop culture coverage than mainstream dailies. And while online sources cover some things well, they tend to ignore local reporting and subjects like theater, classical and experimental music, architecture, the coverage of arts institutions and other things not directly tied to celebrities and commerce. There is absolutely a need for a smart and vigorous paper, with a print and web presence, paying attention to overlooked subjects. Let’s call this unlikely purchase, then, the first good news that this decimated sector has heard in years. Readers – and writers too – could be better for it.A trio of odd developments have dropped in the world of print an online media over the last day or two, and none of the three were even conceivable five or 10 years ago. First, magazine giant Conde Nast – which publishes Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker – has bought the music website Pitchfork. Second, Playboy will no longer print photographs of nude women, conceding the role to the Internet’s ample offerings. Third, the Village Voice, the New York-based symbol of the American alternative press, has just been purchased by a man whose flagship publication is a 50,000-or-so daily newspaper in Pennsylvania’s fifth-largest city. Given the heft the Voice still occupies in the imagination of bohemians, lefties, and writers who came of age from the ‘50s through the ‘90s – as opposed to the paper’s 21st century reality -- this one may be the most startling of them all. Here’s the New York Times:

The Village Voice, the storied alternative weekly newspaper that helped usher in a new era of journalism after its creation 60 years ago, but that has been struggling to find its way in an era of declining circulations and ad revenues, was sold on Monday to a scion of one of America’s wealthiest families with a long history in newspaper publishing. Peter D. Barbey, through his investment company Black Walnut Holdings L.L.C., bought the paper from Voice Media Group, which owns a string of weeklies around the country.

Now, there are reasons to be shocked and appalled that the mighty Voice -- which once had a circulation around 250,000 – was sold to the Berks Co.-dwelling publisher of the Reading Eagle, a paper you probably haven’t heard of unless you live in southeastern Pennsylvania. How can some provincial rich guy, who comes from an old family with no apparent ties to bohemianism – you might be asking -- take over a publication that’s served as an important forum for Beats, hippies, radical feminists, early hip-hop culture, identity politics, avant-garde fiction, and lots of other stuff? But as seemingly straight as Barbey and his company may be, this is about as good an outcome for the Voice as I can imagine in 2015. Print publications of all kinds have had a tough time in the 21st century, but alternative weeklies have been especially hard hit. The demise of the record stores and video shops where people used to pick them up hasn’t helped, but it's mostly been about advertising leaving print, and the inability of these (mostly) free publications to raise their cover prices to make up for declines in ad revenues has limited their options. The Los Angeles weekly I once worked for (owned by the company that just sold the Voice) folded in 2002, and things never really got better for the field after that. During and after the economic crash, the extinctions increased, and the papers that survived got thinner. The once-robust Boston Phoenix died in 2013 after losing roughly $1 million per year. The same year, the Voice’s two leading editors resigned rather than layoff a large proportion of the staff. The collapse or shrinking of other alt-weeklies has continued on schedule; the Philadelphia City Paper printed its final issue last week. So why does the Voice news make an ink-stained wretch like me uncharacteristically hopeful? First is that the company that has owned the Voice for the last decade (once called New Times, now, confusingly, called Voice Media Group) was not quite the ideal owner. I worked with talented and serious journalists at New Times, but these guys never really got the Voice (which, admittedly, had been drifting even before the purchase.) The New Times gang let go countless gifted writers including Robert Christgau, who helped invent rock criticism. “They seemed motivated by hatred of everything the alternative press stood for,” former Voice culture-and-politcs writer Tom Carson told me when I wrote a story about trouble at the paper two years ago. “The leftwing politics, the countercultural sensibility, the value placed on intellectualism. These guys were just aggressively demolishing everything that weeklies were good for.” This is the paper that had once published Jane Jacobs writing on urbanism, Nelson George on "post-soul culture," Manohla Dargis and J. Hoberman on film, as well as pioneering work on the AIDS crisis and the rise of the paranoid right. I don’t put all the blame on the ownership; market forces were tearing the Voice, and other weeklies, apart as well. These are not likely to abate. By comparison, some dailies have had better luck through owners that do not require them to make quarter profit reports. Britain’s Guardian became the most credible source of news in the English-speaking world during the years it was owned by a trust. The Boston Globe, which almost collapsed not long ago, seems stable and healthy under the ownership of businessman John W. Henry. Whatever damage he’s done with Amazon, Jeff Bezos has in most ways been good for the Washington Post, and under his ownership that paper has hired rather than fire journalists. So when Barbey – who has been reading the paper since he was in prep school -- says he’ll invest in the Voice and bolster the staff, it’s worth taking him, for now, at his word. Can he make the paper as vital as it was in its heyday? No; the times are too different. Would it be better if publications of all kinds were supported by ad sales and paid circulation, like most of them used to be? Sure. Even with the huge number of online outlets, the Voice can still be important. At its best, the alternative press was often sharper at pop culture coverage than mainstream dailies. And while online sources cover some things well, they tend to ignore local reporting and subjects like theater, classical and experimental music, architecture, the coverage of arts institutions and other things not directly tied to celebrities and commerce. There is absolutely a need for a smart and vigorous paper, with a print and web presence, paying attention to overlooked subjects. Let’s call this unlikely purchase, then, the first good news that this decimated sector has heard in years. Readers – and writers too – could be better for it.

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Pop-up newsstand in Times Square gives nod to city’s gritty past

In the middle of Times Square nestled between digital billboards, flashing lights, and wall-to-wall consumerism there is a relic of the past - T Sq. Newsstand. Spearheaded by artist Kimou “Grotesk” Meyer in association with Victory Journal, Juxtapoz Magazine, and other visual artists the T Sq. Newsstand is an art installation that embodies nostalgia for the almost forgotten visual landscape of New York City before the 90s. The installation is a fully functional newsstand complete with tags from well-known graffiti artists. The idea is “to bring some culture to Times Square,” and to “raise question and conversation between people,” Meyer comments. “I built my fantasy about what was New York when I was 10,” Meyer went on to explain that he grew up in Switzerland and for his tenth birthday his father gave him two gifts: a book by photographer Henry Chalfant (leading NYC graffiti photographer and co-producer of the film ‘Style Wars’) and a book on New York City architecture. These new visual influences heavily impacted Meyer’s artistic aesthetic. Meyer came to the states in 1999 and recounts, “when I came here everything was pretty much gone, I had more like a visual fantasy about the New York I was hoping to see and the newsstand was kind of the last piece of real estate … that had that kind of grittiness.” Meyer, along with guest artists, will be at the installation everyday from 4-7 to display art, sell prints, and interact with the community. The T Sq. Newsstand will run through October 18th and is located within the Broadway Plaza between 44th and 45th Street. In the middle of Times Square nestled between digital billboards, flashing lights, and wall-to-wall consumerism there is a relic of the past - T Sq. Newsstand. Spearheaded by artist Kimou “Grotesk” Meyer in association with Victory Journal, Juxtapoz Magazine, and other visual artists the T Sq. Newsstand is an art installation that embodies nostalgia for the almost forgotten visual landscape of New York City before the 90s. The installation is a fully functional newsstand complete with tags from well-known graffiti artists. The idea is “to bring some culture to Times Square,” and to “raise question and conversation between people,” Meyer comments. “I built my fantasy about what was New York when I was 10,” Meyer went on to explain that he grew up in Switzerland and for his tenth birthday his father gave him two gifts: a book by photographer Henry Chalfant (leading NYC graffiti photographer and co-producer of the film ‘Style Wars’) and a book on New York City architecture. These new visual influences heavily impacted Meyer’s artistic aesthetic. Meyer came to the states in 1999 and recounts, “when I came here everything was pretty much gone, I had more like a visual fantasy about the New York I was hoping to see and the newsstand was kind of the last piece of real estate … that had that kind of grittiness.” Meyer, along with guest artists, will be at the installation everyday from 4-7 to display art, sell prints, and interact with the community. The T Sq. Newsstand will run through October 18th and is located within the Broadway Plaza between 44th and 45th Street.

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America’s long, dark history of “objectively reasonable” murder

Racial battle fatigue makes Black America numb. However, the numbness does not mean that Black America is free from pain. Langston Hughes’ “dream deferred” feels again today like it is ready to explode. Yet miraculously, somehow it does not. Black America is reminded once again, as though black folks have forgotten, that America does not like black men and boys—or black women and girls—very much. We are loved in the abstract as America’s musicians and athletes and sometimes by enough white folks to be elected President. But our humanity, the stuff that is the basis of shared empathy and respect across the colorline, is very much in doubt. The White Gaze does not see black men and boys, boys and girls, as full and equal human beings. They are the semi-permanent Other. As such, black folks can be subjected to legal murder by the State, its police, armed vigilantes, and other enforcers with little punishment or consequence. Black life is cheap. This is the story of America and the Black Atlantic. The child Tamir Rice was killed in November of 2014 by Cleveland police. Like so many other unarmed black people who have been killed by America’s police in recent years, there is video and photographic evidence of the moment when Rice's lives were stolen from him. On that day, two police,Frank Garmback and Timothy Loehmann (who was fired from a previous police department for incompetence) pulled up less than 10 feet from a child playing with a toy gun, and before two seconds had passed he was on the ground, fatally wounded. Like the white cops who strangled Eric Garner, shot Michael Brown six times, or blindly fired five times into a crowd killing Rekia Boyd, it seems that these two men are not likely to be punished. As reported by the New York Times:

“There can be no doubt that Rice’s death was tragic and, indeed, when one considers his age, heartbreaking,” Mr. Sims wrote. But he added that “Officer Loehmann’s belief that Rice posed a threat of serious physical harm or death was objectively reasonable as was his response to that perceived threat.” Tamir’s death resulted in a lengthy series of investigations that have frustrated some activists, who see the shooting as a clear case of police overreach and have called for the arrests of Officer Loehmann and his partner, Officer Frank Garmback, who drove his police cruiser to within feet of Tamir but who did not fire his weapon. Some have criticized Officer Garmback for parking his cruiser so close. “To suggest that Officer Garmback should have stopped the car at another location is to engage in exactly the kind of ‘Monday morning quarterbacking’ the case law exhorts us to avoid,” Mr. Sims wrote.

Justice is not colorblind in America. Black Americans are routinely punished more severely than white people for the same crimes. The myth of “black crime” is sustained by a criminal justice system that at almost every level (from arrests through to conviction) discriminates against black and brown people. The law represents the interests of elites and not of the masses. In a society structured around white privilege, and founded on a Herrenvolk principle, where to be “white” is to be truly “American,” people of color are second-class citizens. The post-civil right era’s lie of racial “colorblindness” means that the inequalities along the American color line cannot be cured because to ignore the fact of race means that a society cannot effectively deal with the consequences of white supremacy. Ultimately, as Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun famously said, “To get beyond racism we must first take account of race. There is no other way." The lie of colorblindness also encourages confusion, denial, and hypocrisy on matters of racial justice for many white Americans. According to recent surveys, a majority of white Americans believe, even in an era of visible and rampant police brutality against people of color, that African-Americans and whites are treated equally by local police. Even more troubling, when white Americans are shown evidence that the country’s criminal justice system is unfair and racist against blacks,  they still support such outcomes. The language of “colorblindness” and “race neutral” decision making actively buttresses racial disparities in the United States. For example, defenders of the police, and those others who would deny the grotesque way that Tamir Rice was killed, will likely appeal to the supposed “fairness” of “outside experts.” The white racial frame legitimates those outcomes: The system is supposed to be “neutral” and “fair”, thus how can any “reasonable” person doubt the outcome? Likewise, white racial logic proceeds from an assumption that white folks are “neutral” and “rational” while by comparison non-whites are somehow “emotional,” “irrational,” and incapable of “objective” thinking. The killing of Tamir Rice, and the subsequent finding that his unconscionable death can somehow be rationalized as “objectionably reasonable,” digs and stabs at Black America’s feelings of racial battle fatigue. It is a reminder of a profound material and philosophical dilemma: How can the law be fair to people of color when the legal system is an extension of a racist society? White supremacy killed the child Tamir Rice. White supremacy is likely to exonerate the police who killed him. Anti-black racism is not opinion. It is an empirically documented fact. Tamir was killed by “adultification,” a phenomenon where black children are viewed by whites as being considerably older, and less innocent than white children. (Officer Loehmann told police dispatchers that Tamir Rice, who was 12-years-old, was actually a black man in his twenties.) Tamir was killed because police are seven times more likely to shoot unarmed black people than they are whites. Tamir was killed by implicit bias, and how large percentages of white Americans (and others) possess significant, internalized, subconscious anti-black biases. Tamir was killed by an American police culture that in cities such as Cleveland, New York, Ferguson, Baltimore, and elsewhere routinely harasses, abuses, and kills black and brown citizens with impunity. Tamir Rice was also killed by a broader American society where day-to-day anti-black racism is the norm. The shooting dead of unarmed black boys, girls, men, and women by the police are a type of extreme violence. But quotidian white supremacy also hurts the life chances, sanity, health, and happiness of many millions more people of color. The United States is a country that tolerates obscene levels of racial wealth inequality, where discrimination in the labor market denies black and brown Americans a fair return on their educations, in which hospitals force racial minorities to wait longer than whites for assistance, and where black employees are more harshly assessed than their white peers. The lie of American colorblindness is demonstrated in stark and obscene relief by how black boys in Cleveland with toy guns, where the “open carry” of firearms is allowed by law, are shot dead by the police in two seconds while white boys and men with real guns are allowed to walk free, unmolested. Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback pulled the triggers on the guns that were used to shoot the 12-year-old child Tamir Rice. But it was White American society that actually killed him.Racial battle fatigue makes Black America numb. However, the numbness does not mean that Black America is free from pain. Langston Hughes’ “dream deferred” feels again today like it is ready to explode. Yet miraculously, somehow it does not. Black America is reminded once again, as though black folks have forgotten, that America does not like black men and boys—or black women and girls—very much. We are loved in the abstract as America’s musicians and athletes and sometimes by enough white folks to be elected President. But our humanity, the stuff that is the basis of shared empathy and respect across the colorline, is very much in doubt. The White Gaze does not see black men and boys, boys and girls, as full and equal human beings. They are the semi-permanent Other. As such, black folks can be subjected to legal murder by the State, its police, armed vigilantes, and other enforcers with little punishment or consequence. Black life is cheap. This is the story of America and the Black Atlantic. The child Tamir Rice was killed in November of 2014 by Cleveland police. Like so many other unarmed black people who have been killed by America’s police in recent years, there is video and photographic evidence of the moment when Rice's lives were stolen from him. On that day, two police,Frank Garmback and Timothy Loehmann (who was fired from a previous police department for incompetence) pulled up less than 10 feet from a child playing with a toy gun, and before two seconds had passed he was on the ground, fatally wounded. Like the white cops who strangled Eric Garner, shot Michael Brown six times, or blindly fired five times into a crowd killing Rekia Boyd, it seems that these two men are not likely to be punished. As reported by the New York Times:

“There can be no doubt that Rice’s death was tragic and, indeed, when one considers his age, heartbreaking,” Mr. Sims wrote. But he added that “Officer Loehmann’s belief that Rice posed a threat of serious physical harm or death was objectively reasonable as was his response to that perceived threat.” Tamir’s death resulted in a lengthy series of investigations that have frustrated some activists, who see the shooting as a clear case of police overreach and have called for the arrests of Officer Loehmann and his partner, Officer Frank Garmback, who drove his police cruiser to within feet of Tamir but who did not fire his weapon. Some have criticized Officer Garmback for parking his cruiser so close. “To suggest that Officer Garmback should have stopped the car at another location is to engage in exactly the kind of ‘Monday morning quarterbacking’ the case law exhorts us to avoid,” Mr. Sims wrote.

Justice is not colorblind in America. Black Americans are routinely punished more severely than white people for the same crimes. The myth of “black crime” is sustained by a criminal justice system that at almost every level (from arrests through to conviction) discriminates against black and brown people. The law represents the interests of elites and not of the masses. In a society structured around white privilege, and founded on a Herrenvolk principle, where to be “white” is to be truly “American,” people of color are second-class citizens. The post-civil right era’s lie of racial “colorblindness” means that the inequalities along the American color line cannot be cured because to ignore the fact of race means that a society cannot effectively deal with the consequences of white supremacy. Ultimately, as Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun famously said, “To get beyond racism we must first take account of race. There is no other way." The lie of colorblindness also encourages confusion, denial, and hypocrisy on matters of racial justice for many white Americans. According to recent surveys, a majority of white Americans believe, even in an era of visible and rampant police brutality against people of color, that African-Americans and whites are treated equally by local police. Even more troubling, when white Americans are shown evidence that the country’s criminal justice system is unfair and racist against blacks,  they still support such outcomes. The language of “colorblindness” and “race neutral” decision making actively buttresses racial disparities in the United States. For example, defenders of the police, and those others who would deny the grotesque way that Tamir Rice was killed, will likely appeal to the supposed “fairness” of “outside experts.” The white racial frame legitimates those outcomes: The system is supposed to be “neutral” and “fair”, thus how can any “reasonable” person doubt the outcome? Likewise, white racial logic proceeds from an assumption that white folks are “neutral” and “rational” while by comparison non-whites are somehow “emotional,” “irrational,” and incapable of “objective” thinking. The killing of Tamir Rice, and the subsequent finding that his unconscionable death can somehow be rationalized as “objectionably reasonable,” digs and stabs at Black America’s feelings of racial battle fatigue. It is a reminder of a profound material and philosophical dilemma: How can the law be fair to people of color when the legal system is an extension of a racist society? White supremacy killed the child Tamir Rice. White supremacy is likely to exonerate the police who killed him. Anti-black racism is not opinion. It is an empirically documented fact. Tamir was killed by “adultification,” a phenomenon where black children are viewed by whites as being considerably older, and less innocent than white children. (Officer Loehmann told police dispatchers that Tamir Rice, who was 12-years-old, was actually a black man in his twenties.) Tamir was killed because police are seven times more likely to shoot unarmed black people than they are whites. Tamir was killed by implicit bias, and how large percentages of white Americans (and others) possess significant, internalized, subconscious anti-black biases. Tamir was killed by an American police culture that in cities such as Cleveland, New York, Ferguson, Baltimore, and elsewhere routinely harasses, abuses, and kills black and brown citizens with impunity. Tamir Rice was also killed by a broader American society where day-to-day anti-black racism is the norm. The shooting dead of unarmed black boys, girls, men, and women by the police are a type of extreme violence. But quotidian white supremacy also hurts the life chances, sanity, health, and happiness of many millions more people of color. The United States is a country that tolerates obscene levels of racial wealth inequality, where discrimination in the labor market denies black and brown Americans a fair return on their educations, in which hospitals force racial minorities to wait longer than whites for assistance, and where black employees are more harshly assessed than their white peers. The lie of American colorblindness is demonstrated in stark and obscene relief by how black boys in Cleveland with toy guns, where the “open carry” of firearms is allowed by law, are shot dead by the police in two seconds while white boys and men with real guns are allowed to walk free, unmolested. Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback pulled the triggers on the guns that were used to shoot the 12-year-old child Tamir Rice. But it was White American society that actually killed him.

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Kids these days with their dangerous hugs: Worst aunt ever sues 8-year-old nephew over “exuberant” greeting

I really keep hoping there's some other side to this story that just hasn't been disclosed yet. Because from the sounds of it so far, this is just another one of "Everything is awful and people are terrible" tales. Here's your headline to get you started: "8-year-old Westport boy on trial for exuberance." Oh, Jennifer Connell, the social media wrath you've just opened up. According to the Connecticut Post, Connell, a 54-year-old Manhattan human resources manager with no children of her own, is seeking $127,000 in damages from her nephew Sean Tarala, stemming from a 2011 incident at the boy's 8th birthday party at his Westport, Connecticut home. According to her testimony, the boy was riding his new bicycle — his first two-wheeler — when she arrived for the festivities. She claims when he saw her, he quickly abandoned the bike and leapt toward her, saying, "Auntie Jen, Auntie Jen." She claims, "All of a sudden he was there in the air, I had to catch him and we tumbled onto the ground. I remember him shouting, 'Auntie Jen I love you,' and there he was flying at me." She says she fell to the ground and broke her wrist. Now, four years later, she acknowledges that her nephew is a "very loving, sensitive" kid, but her insists, "The injuries, losses and harms to the plaintiff were caused by the negligence and carelessness of the minor defendant in that a reasonable eight-year-old under those circumstances would know or should have known that a forceful greeting such as the one delivered by the defendant to the plaintiff could cause the harms and losses suffered by the plaintiff." Tarala, now 12, is the only defendant. The Post reports that the boy appeared "confused" when he sat in court Friday with his father Michael, a local electrician. Sounds like Connell has had some tough times since that fateful wrist injury. She told the court this week that, "I live in Manhattan in a third-floor walk-up so it has been very difficult," which does make me wonder how she's walking up her apartment stairs — I, for one, use my feet. Connell continued, "And we all know how crowded it is in Manhattan." She also claims, "I was at a party recently, and it was difficult to hold my hors d’oeuvre plate." Can you really put a price on not being able to hold one's canapés? Well, maybe you can. Maybe it's exactly $127,000. Given the extent of Connell's reported suffering, why should young Sean Tarala get off scot-free for bounding into his aunt's arms? What else has he got going on these days anyway? Just because his mother Lisa died suddenly last year is no reason to let him off the hook. After her death, her family cryptically requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention or Domestic Violence Crisis Center. Based on her obituary, which only names a sister Karen, it does not appear the plaintiff was related to Mrs. Tarala. In 2012, the Westport Daily Voice reported that a 45-year-old Lisa Tarala was arrested and charged with drunk driving, and issued an infraction for possession of marijuana, after being spotted speeding on Riverside Avenue. The surviving Tarala parent's company, meanwhile, is currently the subject of another lawsuit  involving "unfair and deceptive practices in trade and commerce," to the tune of $250,000. Why Connell waited so long to press her case, and why against a child, is not clear — perhaps she and the family unsuccessfully attempted other means of resolution outside of court. And because the current case is before a jury now, the records are sealed. What does seem clear, though, is that young Sean Tarala has been through a hell of a lot the past few years. Jennifer Connell will no doubt not have to worry about getting any more hugs from him any time soon. Update: The Associated Press reports that a jury found boy not liable for his aunt's injuries.   I really keep hoping there's some other side to this story that just hasn't been disclosed yet. Because from the sounds of it so far, this is just another one of "Everything is awful and people are terrible" tales. Here's your headline to get you started: "8-year-old Westport boy on trial for exuberance." Oh, Jennifer Connell, the social media wrath you've just opened up. According to the Connecticut Post, Connell, a 54-year-old Manhattan human resources manager with no children of her own, is seeking $127,000 in damages from her nephew Sean Tarala, stemming from a 2011 incident at the boy's 8th birthday party at his Westport, Connecticut home. According to her testimony, the boy was riding his new bicycle — his first two-wheeler — when she arrived for the festivities. She claims when he saw her, he quickly abandoned the bike and leapt toward her, saying, "Auntie Jen, Auntie Jen." She claims, "All of a sudden he was there in the air, I had to catch him and we tumbled onto the ground. I remember him shouting, 'Auntie Jen I love you,' and there he was flying at me." She says she fell to the ground and broke her wrist. Now, four years later, she acknowledges that her nephew is a "very loving, sensitive" kid, but her insists, "The injuries, losses and harms to the plaintiff were caused by the negligence and carelessness of the minor defendant in that a reasonable eight-year-old under those circumstances would know or should have known that a forceful greeting such as the one delivered by the defendant to the plaintiff could cause the harms and losses suffered by the plaintiff." Tarala, now 12, is the only defendant. The Post reports that the boy appeared "confused" when he sat in court Friday with his father Michael, a local electrician. Sounds like Connell has had some tough times since that fateful wrist injury. She told the court this week that, "I live in Manhattan in a third-floor walk-up so it has been very difficult," which does make me wonder how she's walking up her apartment stairs — I, for one, use my feet. Connell continued, "And we all know how crowded it is in Manhattan." She also claims, "I was at a party recently, and it was difficult to hold my hors d’oeuvre plate." Can you really put a price on not being able to hold one's canapés? Well, maybe you can. Maybe it's exactly $127,000. Given the extent of Connell's reported suffering, why should young Sean Tarala get off scot-free for bounding into his aunt's arms? What else has he got going on these days anyway? Just because his mother Lisa died suddenly last year is no reason to let him off the hook. After her death, her family cryptically requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention or Domestic Violence Crisis Center. Based on her obituary, which only names a sister Karen, it does not appear the plaintiff was related to Mrs. Tarala. In 2012, the Westport Daily Voice reported that a 45-year-old Lisa Tarala was arrested and charged with drunk driving, and issued an infraction for possession of marijuana, after being spotted speeding on Riverside Avenue. The surviving Tarala parent's company, meanwhile, is currently the subject of another lawsuit  involving "unfair and deceptive practices in trade and commerce," to the tune of $250,000. Why Connell waited so long to press her case, and why against a child, is not clear — perhaps she and the family unsuccessfully attempted other means of resolution outside of court. And because the current case is before a jury now, the records are sealed. What does seem clear, though, is that young Sean Tarala has been through a hell of a lot the past few years. Jennifer Connell will no doubt not have to worry about getting any more hugs from him any time soon. Update: The Associated Press reports that a jury found boy not liable for his aunt's injuries.  

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“Stick person,” “Skinny bitch,” “Giraffe”: Stop bullying me for being thin

“You look like a stick person,” a girl said to me tonight “What do you eat?” I stared at her, hoping she might take back the question or apologize. She stared back at me, and said only, “Seriously though.”

I'd hoped this would have stopped by now.

I am a skinny woman. I know this, because people, mostly women, tell me so every day. They say it with disdain. They say it with anger. Sometimes they say it in the form of a question: “Do you even eat?” Or by expressing concern: “You should eat something!”

Almost always, they say it in a way that expresses judgment. "Giraffe," I’ve heard, also: "stick person," "skinny bitch." These people walk up to me out of nowhere. The sight of me moves them to tell me what they think. I catch groups of disapproving women staring me down and whispering to one another. One of them might make a comment to me on the way to the bathroom, emboldened by cocktails. A man once complimented my very beautiful friend, then turned to me and said, “You’re skinny but you’re not that pretty.”

These people want me to know what they think. They want to give me a taste of their judgment, reinforced by cultural attitudes that make it acceptable to do so. It isn’t just strangers. It's new coworkers, friends of friends, and parents too. I had to move once after a Craigslist roommate couldn’t help herself from commenting daily on my weight.

My body is a problem for people. And I get it. Skinny is an oppressive symbol in a culture that teaches women to hate themselves. Confronting me is confronting something that has caused them harm. It’s a reaction to the privileges granted - sometimes through extreme diet, sometimes by excessive exercise, by mental illness, or sometimes utterly arbitrarily - to some body types over others. And for women who have struggled with their weight over the course of a lifetime, who have endured fad diets, outlandish exercise regimes, and all shades of deprivation in the hopes of feeling accepted, seeing a body like mine can be an emotional slap in the face.

But while our experiences vary, skinniness isn’t a free pass from the burdens of self-consciousness and the psychic struggle that a ruthlessly superficial society inflicts. No matter how you measure up, being reduced to your body parts is never healthy.

Most genetically thin women develop their sense of worth in girlhood, where messages are less mixed, and their bodies are more ubiquitously perceived as unattractive. Until I was seventeen, lunchtime regularly involved being called anorexic, bulimic, skeleton, or stick-person. Girls approached me in the bathroom, trying to convince me to confide in them. "Eat something, anorexic girl," they'd shout in the hallway. I remember sitting at summer camp overhearing two girls describe my body, part by part. "Look at her arms, they're so gross," one said. I went crying to a camp counselor who told me I could hardly blame them: I was too skinny and should eat more. Adults were not the exception. At the till of my Dairy Queen job, they'd make jokes about how I needed more Blizzards, or brazenly tell me I needed to get help. After another student complained to my junior high school about my appearance, my guidance counselor, someone who had personally observed me eating in the past, brought me into her office to ask if I was bulimic.

I wasn’t. My parents told her the same thing when she called them. My mother hugged me when I got home, inconsolable.

I wasn’t bulimic, or anorexic, and I’m not now either. Being thin is not a choice I've made. I’m skinny because I have Marfan’s Syndrome. It's a genetic condition that makes my body thin and lanky. Marfan's affects the connective tissue, and brings with it a litany of health issues. It's caused my lungs to collapse five times to date, most recently requiring a lung lobectomy (if you don't know what that is, don't ask). My joints don’t always fit together well. I have dislocated lenses in my eyes. My heart valve leaks and may have to be replaced. I'm at risk of having my aorta spontaneously dissect.

It’s been interesting to live with a body that can fail on a whim. Most of the time though, it’s all very manageable. My Marfan's is relatively mild. To protect myself I don't play contact sports, scuba dive, or lift heavy things. I wear protective eye gear when needed, and I get an ultrasound of my heart every year. I am grateful for the perspective my lung issues have gifted me; I learned not to take health for granted.

The far less manageable, in some ways more painful, part of Marfan’s has been the public body critique. Constant scrutiny and feedback led to a tumultuous relationship with my own appearance. It bolstered a shame and isolation that spilled into all areas of my life.

To cope, I learned to mitigate judgment in ways I now know to be standard amongst the unintentionally thin. I stopped going to the bathroom during meals with colleagues and strangers. I avoided ordering salads. I wore loose clothes to events frequented by faux-feminists, who would label me instantly as the enemy. I layered-up, wearing thick tights under my jeans when it was far too warm to do so. I developed standard responses to questions and quips about my weight, and became self-deprecating to make sure people knew I didn’t feel better-than because of my size.

Like everyone, I wanted to be accepted. Moreover, I wanted to just be. But the effect of being picked apart is insidious and eventually I came to feel deeply flawed. I began covering mirrors, avoiding reflections, and obsessing about looking normal. I went through phases of having panic attacks and avoiding going out. When I tried to talk about what I was going through, girls tended to think I was being vain. After all, what did I have to complain about when others had it so much worse?

When the body-positive movement started kicking up a few years ago, it looked promising for everyone. Unfortunately, this movement has, for a time at least, made things harder for women like me: women who resemble the body type fetishized by fashion and popular media but, more and more (and rightly so) skewered by public opinion. Margaret Cho started saying in her stage show that she likes “real women” and that “real women have curves” - a mantra that is still repeated years later. Lady Gaga, in the midst of her body image campaign, approached thin prepubescent girls and criticized their weight. Shows like Drop Dead Diva showed confident, curvy protagonists making cutting jokes about the dumb, skinny characters.

This cultural breakthrough has led to an increase in real-life critique. People feel more entitled than ever to tell skinny women what they think. To be clear, I’m not talking about confrontations of the I’m genuinely and sincerely concerned for your health kind. These are always understandable, if not appreciated. But when comments are not directed at me as a person, but at what I represent to someone else, I’m left wondering if the movement has really achieved its goal of promoting widespread acceptance of varied body types.

Maybe this is a temporary cost of a needed evolution, an overcompensation for generations of fat-shaming. More likely though, we are trapping ourselves in an endless pursuit. The media’s ideal female body stretches well beyond weight, after all, and is far from static. The nose we’re told to love today will be different ten years from now. The hips of today, whether rounded or narrow, will somehow fall short of the ideal future generations will set. What we will never love is having our worth boiled down to how we look.

When we, as individuals or as society, objectify “skinny bitches,” we sustain the same system we claim to oppose. We're still reducing women to their shapes, judging women's bodies in unhelpful, reductive, and oppressive ways. We're still trying to empower ourselves by putting other women down, still dictating if women are sexy, strong, or “real” based on the size of their curves. 

“You look like a stick person,” a girl said to me tonight “What do you eat?” I stared at her, hoping she might take back the question or apologize. She stared back at me, and said only, “Seriously though.”

I'd hoped this would have stopped by now.

I am a skinny woman. I know this, because people, mostly women, tell me so every day. They say it with disdain. They say it with anger. Sometimes they say it in the form of a question: “Do you even eat?” Or by expressing concern: “You should eat something!”

Almost always, they say it in a way that expresses judgment. "Giraffe," I’ve heard, also: "stick person," "skinny bitch." These people walk up to me out of nowhere. The sight of me moves them to tell me what they think. I catch groups of disapproving women staring me down and whispering to one another. One of them might make a comment to me on the way to the bathroom, emboldened by cocktails. A man once complimented my very beautiful friend, then turned to me and said, “You’re skinny but you’re not that pretty.”

These people want me to know what they think. They want to give me a taste of their judgment, reinforced by cultural attitudes that make it acceptable to do so. It isn’t just strangers. It's new coworkers, friends of friends, and parents too. I had to move once after a Craigslist roommate couldn’t help herself from commenting daily on my weight.

My body is a problem for people. And I get it. Skinny is an oppressive symbol in a culture that teaches women to hate themselves. Confronting me is confronting something that has caused them harm. It’s a reaction to the privileges granted - sometimes through extreme diet, sometimes by excessive exercise, by mental illness, or sometimes utterly arbitrarily - to some body types over others. And for women who have struggled with their weight over the course of a lifetime, who have endured fad diets, outlandish exercise regimes, and all shades of deprivation in the hopes of feeling accepted, seeing a body like mine can be an emotional slap in the face.

But while our experiences vary, skinniness isn’t a free pass from the burdens of self-consciousness and the psychic struggle that a ruthlessly superficial society inflicts. No matter how you measure up, being reduced to your body parts is never healthy.

Most genetically thin women develop their sense of worth in girlhood, where messages are less mixed, and their bodies are more ubiquitously perceived as unattractive. Until I was seventeen, lunchtime regularly involved being called anorexic, bulimic, skeleton, or stick-person. Girls approached me in the bathroom, trying to convince me to confide in them. "Eat something, anorexic girl," they'd shout in the hallway. I remember sitting at summer camp overhearing two girls describe my body, part by part. "Look at her arms, they're so gross," one said. I went crying to a camp counselor who told me I could hardly blame them: I was too skinny and should eat more. Adults were not the exception. At the till of my Dairy Queen job, they'd make jokes about how I needed more Blizzards, or brazenly tell me I needed to get help. After another student complained to my junior high school about my appearance, my guidance counselor, someone who had personally observed me eating in the past, brought me into her office to ask if I was bulimic.

I wasn’t. My parents told her the same thing when she called them. My mother hugged me when I got home, inconsolable.

I wasn’t bulimic, or anorexic, and I’m not now either. Being thin is not a choice I've made. I’m skinny because I have Marfan’s Syndrome. It's a genetic condition that makes my body thin and lanky. Marfan's affects the connective tissue, and brings with it a litany of health issues. It's caused my lungs to collapse five times to date, most recently requiring a lung lobectomy (if you don't know what that is, don't ask). My joints don’t always fit together well. I have dislocated lenses in my eyes. My heart valve leaks and may have to be replaced. I'm at risk of having my aorta spontaneously dissect.

It’s been interesting to live with a body that can fail on a whim. Most of the time though, it’s all very manageable. My Marfan's is relatively mild. To protect myself I don't play contact sports, scuba dive, or lift heavy things. I wear protective eye gear when needed, and I get an ultrasound of my heart every year. I am grateful for the perspective my lung issues have gifted me; I learned not to take health for granted.

The far less manageable, in some ways more painful, part of Marfan’s has been the public body critique. Constant scrutiny and feedback led to a tumultuous relationship with my own appearance. It bolstered a shame and isolation that spilled into all areas of my life.

To cope, I learned to mitigate judgment in ways I now know to be standard amongst the unintentionally thin. I stopped going to the bathroom during meals with colleagues and strangers. I avoided ordering salads. I wore loose clothes to events frequented by faux-feminists, who would label me instantly as the enemy. I layered-up, wearing thick tights under my jeans when it was far too warm to do so. I developed standard responses to questions and quips about my weight, and became self-deprecating to make sure people knew I didn’t feel better-than because of my size.

Like everyone, I wanted to be accepted. Moreover, I wanted to just be. But the effect of being picked apart is insidious and eventually I came to feel deeply flawed. I began covering mirrors, avoiding reflections, and obsessing about looking normal. I went through phases of having panic attacks and avoiding going out. When I tried to talk about what I was going through, girls tended to think I was being vain. After all, what did I have to complain about when others had it so much worse?

When the body-positive movement started kicking up a few years ago, it looked promising for everyone. Unfortunately, this movement has, for a time at least, made things harder for women like me: women who resemble the body type fetishized by fashion and popular media but, more and more (and rightly so) skewered by public opinion. Margaret Cho started saying in her stage show that she likes “real women” and that “real women have curves” - a mantra that is still repeated years later. Lady Gaga, in the midst of her body image campaign, approached thin prepubescent girls and criticized their weight. Shows like Drop Dead Diva showed confident, curvy protagonists making cutting jokes about the dumb, skinny characters.

This cultural breakthrough has led to an increase in real-life critique. People feel more entitled than ever to tell skinny women what they think. To be clear, I’m not talking about confrontations of the I’m genuinely and sincerely concerned for your health kind. These are always understandable, if not appreciated. But when comments are not directed at me as a person, but at what I represent to someone else, I’m left wondering if the movement has really achieved its goal of promoting widespread acceptance of varied body types.

Maybe this is a temporary cost of a needed evolution, an overcompensation for generations of fat-shaming. More likely though, we are trapping ourselves in an endless pursuit. The media’s ideal female body stretches well beyond weight, after all, and is far from static. The nose we’re told to love today will be different ten years from now. The hips of today, whether rounded or narrow, will somehow fall short of the ideal future generations will set. What we will never love is having our worth boiled down to how we look.

When we, as individuals or as society, objectify “skinny bitches,” we sustain the same system we claim to oppose. We're still reducing women to their shapes, judging women's bodies in unhelpful, reductive, and oppressive ways. We're still trying to empower ourselves by putting other women down, still dictating if women are sexy, strong, or “real” based on the size of their curves. 

“You look like a stick person,” a girl said to me tonight “What do you eat?” I stared at her, hoping she might take back the question or apologize. She stared back at me, and said only, “Seriously though.”

I'd hoped this would have stopped by now.

I am a skinny woman. I know this, because people, mostly women, tell me so every day. They say it with disdain. They say it with anger. Sometimes they say it in the form of a question: “Do you even eat?” Or by expressing concern: “You should eat something!”

Almost always, they say it in a way that expresses judgment. "Giraffe," I’ve heard, also: "stick person," "skinny bitch." These people walk up to me out of nowhere. The sight of me moves them to tell me what they think. I catch groups of disapproving women staring me down and whispering to one another. One of them might make a comment to me on the way to the bathroom, emboldened by cocktails. A man once complimented my very beautiful friend, then turned to me and said, “You’re skinny but you’re not that pretty.”

These people want me to know what they think. They want to give me a taste of their judgment, reinforced by cultural attitudes that make it acceptable to do so. It isn’t just strangers. It's new coworkers, friends of friends, and parents too. I had to move once after a Craigslist roommate couldn’t help herself from commenting daily on my weight.

My body is a problem for people. And I get it. Skinny is an oppressive symbol in a culture that teaches women to hate themselves. Confronting me is confronting something that has caused them harm. It’s a reaction to the privileges granted - sometimes through extreme diet, sometimes by excessive exercise, by mental illness, or sometimes utterly arbitrarily - to some body types over others. And for women who have struggled with their weight over the course of a lifetime, who have endured fad diets, outlandish exercise regimes, and all shades of deprivation in the hopes of feeling accepted, seeing a body like mine can be an emotional slap in the face.

But while our experiences vary, skinniness isn’t a free pass from the burdens of self-consciousness and the psychic struggle that a ruthlessly superficial society inflicts. No matter how you measure up, being reduced to your body parts is never healthy.

Most genetically thin women develop their sense of worth in girlhood, where messages are less mixed, and their bodies are more ubiquitously perceived as unattractive. Until I was seventeen, lunchtime regularly involved being called anorexic, bulimic, skeleton, or stick-person. Girls approached me in the bathroom, trying to convince me to confide in them. "Eat something, anorexic girl," they'd shout in the hallway. I remember sitting at summer camp overhearing two girls describe my body, part by part. "Look at her arms, they're so gross," one said. I went crying to a camp counselor who told me I could hardly blame them: I was too skinny and should eat more. Adults were not the exception. At the till of my Dairy Queen job, they'd make jokes about how I needed more Blizzards, or brazenly tell me I needed to get help. After another student complained to my junior high school about my appearance, my guidance counselor, someone who had personally observed me eating in the past, brought me into her office to ask if I was bulimic.

I wasn’t. My parents told her the same thing when she called them. My mother hugged me when I got home, inconsolable.

I wasn’t bulimic, or anorexic, and I’m not now either. Being thin is not a choice I've made. I’m skinny because I have Marfan’s Syndrome. It's a genetic condition that makes my body thin and lanky. Marfan's affects the connective tissue, and brings with it a litany of health issues. It's caused my lungs to collapse five times to date, most recently requiring a lung lobectomy (if you don't know what that is, don't ask). My joints don’t always fit together well. I have dislocated lenses in my eyes. My heart valve leaks and may have to be replaced. I'm at risk of having my aorta spontaneously dissect.

It’s been interesting to live with a body that can fail on a whim. Most of the time though, it’s all very manageable. My Marfan's is relatively mild. To protect myself I don't play contact sports, scuba dive, or lift heavy things. I wear protective eye gear when needed, and I get an ultrasound of my heart every year. I am grateful for the perspective my lung issues have gifted me; I learned not to take health for granted.

The far less manageable, in some ways more painful, part of Marfan’s has been the public body critique. Constant scrutiny and feedback led to a tumultuous relationship with my own appearance. It bolstered a shame and isolation that spilled into all areas of my life.

To cope, I learned to mitigate judgment in ways I now know to be standard amongst the unintentionally thin. I stopped going to the bathroom during meals with colleagues and strangers. I avoided ordering salads. I wore loose clothes to events frequented by faux-feminists, who would label me instantly as the enemy. I layered-up, wearing thick tights under my jeans when it was far too warm to do so. I developed standard responses to questions and quips about my weight, and became self-deprecating to make sure people knew I didn’t feel better-than because of my size.

Like everyone, I wanted to be accepted. Moreover, I wanted to just be. But the effect of being picked apart is insidious and eventually I came to feel deeply flawed. I began covering mirrors, avoiding reflections, and obsessing about looking normal. I went through phases of having panic attacks and avoiding going out. When I tried to talk about what I was going through, girls tended to think I was being vain. After all, what did I have to complain about when others had it so much worse?

When the body-positive movement started kicking up a few years ago, it looked promising for everyone. Unfortunately, this movement has, for a time at least, made things harder for women like me: women who resemble the body type fetishized by fashion and popular media but, more and more (and rightly so) skewered by public opinion. Margaret Cho started saying in her stage show that she likes “real women” and that “real women have curves” - a mantra that is still repeated years later. Lady Gaga, in the midst of her body image campaign, approached thin prepubescent girls and criticized their weight. Shows like Drop Dead Diva showed confident, curvy protagonists making cutting jokes about the dumb, skinny characters.

This cultural breakthrough has led to an increase in real-life critique. People feel more entitled than ever to tell skinny women what they think. To be clear, I’m not talking about confrontations of the I’m genuinely and sincerely concerned for your health kind. These are always understandable, if not appreciated. But when comments are not directed at me as a person, but at what I represent to someone else, I’m left wondering if the movement has really achieved its goal of promoting widespread acceptance of varied body types.

Maybe this is a temporary cost of a needed evolution, an overcompensation for generations of fat-shaming. More likely though, we are trapping ourselves in an endless pursuit. The media’s ideal female body stretches well beyond weight, after all, and is far from static. The nose we’re told to love today will be different ten years from now. The hips of today, whether rounded or narrow, will somehow fall short of the ideal future generations will set. What we will never love is having our worth boiled down to how we look.

When we, as individuals or as society, objectify “skinny bitches,” we sustain the same system we claim to oppose. We're still reducing women to their shapes, judging women's bodies in unhelpful, reductive, and oppressive ways. We're still trying to empower ourselves by putting other women down, still dictating if women are sexy, strong, or “real” based on the size of their curves. 

Continue Reading...

The science behind the “Bro Job”: Why ‘straight’ men have sex with each other

At this point, lesbian sex (the porny kind) is practically considered vanilla. But when it comes to two self-identified straight guys getting together, we tend to stiffen up, and not in the fun way. The term “bro job” generally refers to sex acts taking place between heterosexual men. The phenomenon was recently explored by Dr. Jane Ward in her book Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men , who suggests it's a lot more common than most people may think. Sex therapist Susan Block agrees. “I hear about it going on in Saudi Arabia, in Latin America – I talk to guys from all over the world who are doing this. In all different cultures.” Block explained to AlterNet that sexual activity between self-identifying straight males is one of the most common topics introduced during her therapy sessions with men. “We’ve shut down on the phenomenon of male sexuality. Now, we’re starting to ease up on that natural fluidity of men. But it's always been there,” she says. “Sometimes you hide it because you don’t want to suffer from society’s punishments.” Of course, identity politics is a messy game. And while arousal makes up just one piece of the very complex puzzle that is sexual orientation, it is a major player. We’re quick to assign the “bisexual” label to those for which sexual arousal is not dictated by gender. But it’s not always a welcome title. “I am often forced to call myself ‘bi,’ but I rarely find labels appropriate,” says model Paul LaBlanc (a pseudonym). As Block explains, sexual orientation goes a lot further than the sexual activities we engage in. “I think to a great degree when people think about their own sexual orientation, they’re thinking about their hopes and dreams for themselves in terms of love and romance. Not just sex.” In her book, Ward insists that sex acts between men are not symptoms of a suppressed gay identity, but rather an example of the fluid nature of human sexuality. Still, some ask, why men? Ward writes, “By understanding their same-sex sexual practice as meaningless, accidental, or even necessary, straight white men can perform homosexual contact in heterosexual ways.” “Meaningless.” A hard word to sneak by a therapist. But this notion of meaninglessness may help explain what makes sex between men appealing. “Women are full of meaning,” says Block “One of the things that men like about other men is how meaningless it is. It’s just for fun.” That’s not to say that men don’t crave intimacy – they do, in its place. But Block suggests that for men looking for free, no-strings-attached sex, a male partner may be their best bet. Removing sex from its prescribed context is often discouraged in heterosexual relationships. If you’re looking to have sex for sport, doing it with another man might make some sense. Professional dominatrix Sandra LaMorgese once told AlterNet, “I’m dominant in every aspect of life but I'm not going to have a submissive partner. I need someone to dominate me. That way I get the balance too.” LaMorgese refers to herself as an “alpha submissive.” It's an experience that many men crave as well. And some will step outside the bounds of gender to achieve it. LaBlanc explains, “I tend strongly towards being dominant with women and submissive with men. Not totally in either direction, it's not that simple... But it is clear that I take on different roles with different genders.” “To me, no man has the soft indescribable beauty of a woman. And no woman can ‘take me’ the way a man can.” There are other reasons self-identified straight men might have sex with each other. Block explained that some men are looking for the BDSM element, which can involve humiliation by means of another penis, a larger penis. There’s the curiosity bit, the desire to be with someone ‘who looks like me.’ There's also mutual masturbation. And then there’s the simple fact that males manifest their sexual excitement in much more obvious ways than women, and that’s something a lot of guys find arousing, even relieving. Of course, condensing the scope of sexual desire isn’t something that can be done in a thousand words or so. The recent wave of interest in this not-so-recent phenomenon says something about the our current sexual climate. We can now admit that "bro jobs" are happening, and happening often. Though where they take place is often indicative of how people expect others to digest the news of these rendezvous. “I hear a lot about secrets,” says Block. The fact that society is starting to have more open discussions about sex is good. The fact that society only wants to discuss certain kinds of sex leaves something to be desired. But if we take a step back we might find that what traditionalists deem “unnatural” sexual behavior (i.e. anything outside the confines of heterosexual marriage) can be fairly intrinsic. However those participating in them want to self-identify is up to them. Block suggests we take a look at our closest "kissing cousins," the Bonobo. In her book, The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace Through Pleasure, Block explains that the apes often engage in what’s known as “penis fencing,” whereby two males will rub their erect penises against each other’s. She told us, “They stop each other from killing each other by rub rub rubbing, until they come come come. And then have a banana together or something," adding, "I think there’s a very positive and certainly very natural aspect to this.” At this point, lesbian sex (the porny kind) is practically considered vanilla. But when it comes to two self-identified straight guys getting together, we tend to stiffen up, and not in the fun way. The term “bro job” generally refers to sex acts taking place between heterosexual men. The phenomenon was recently explored by Dr. Jane Ward in her book Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men , who suggests it's a lot more common than most people may think. Sex therapist Susan Block agrees. “I hear about it going on in Saudi Arabia, in Latin America – I talk to guys from all over the world who are doing this. In all different cultures.” Block explained to AlterNet that sexual activity between self-identifying straight males is one of the most common topics introduced during her therapy sessions with men. “We’ve shut down on the phenomenon of male sexuality. Now, we’re starting to ease up on that natural fluidity of men. But it's always been there,” she says. “Sometimes you hide it because you don’t want to suffer from society’s punishments.” Of course, identity politics is a messy game. And while arousal makes up just one piece of the very complex puzzle that is sexual orientation, it is a major player. We’re quick to assign the “bisexual” label to those for which sexual arousal is not dictated by gender. But it’s not always a welcome title. “I am often forced to call myself ‘bi,’ but I rarely find labels appropriate,” says model Paul LaBlanc (a pseudonym). As Block explains, sexual orientation goes a lot further than the sexual activities we engage in. “I think to a great degree when people think about their own sexual orientation, they’re thinking about their hopes and dreams for themselves in terms of love and romance. Not just sex.” In her book, Ward insists that sex acts between men are not symptoms of a suppressed gay identity, but rather an example of the fluid nature of human sexuality. Still, some ask, why men? Ward writes, “By understanding their same-sex sexual practice as meaningless, accidental, or even necessary, straight white men can perform homosexual contact in heterosexual ways.” “Meaningless.” A hard word to sneak by a therapist. But this notion of meaninglessness may help explain what makes sex between men appealing. “Women are full of meaning,” says Block “One of the things that men like about other men is how meaningless it is. It’s just for fun.” That’s not to say that men don’t crave intimacy – they do, in its place. But Block suggests that for men looking for free, no-strings-attached sex, a male partner may be their best bet. Removing sex from its prescribed context is often discouraged in heterosexual relationships. If you’re looking to have sex for sport, doing it with another man might make some sense. Professional dominatrix Sandra LaMorgese once told AlterNet, “I’m dominant in every aspect of life but I'm not going to have a submissive partner. I need someone to dominate me. That way I get the balance too.” LaMorgese refers to herself as an “alpha submissive.” It's an experience that many men crave as well. And some will step outside the bounds of gender to achieve it. LaBlanc explains, “I tend strongly towards being dominant with women and submissive with men. Not totally in either direction, it's not that simple... But it is clear that I take on different roles with different genders.” “To me, no man has the soft indescribable beauty of a woman. And no woman can ‘take me’ the way a man can.” There are other reasons self-identified straight men might have sex with each other. Block explained that some men are looking for the BDSM element, which can involve humiliation by means of another penis, a larger penis. There’s the curiosity bit, the desire to be with someone ‘who looks like me.’ There's also mutual masturbation. And then there’s the simple fact that males manifest their sexual excitement in much more obvious ways than women, and that’s something a lot of guys find arousing, even relieving. Of course, condensing the scope of sexual desire isn’t something that can be done in a thousand words or so. The recent wave of interest in this not-so-recent phenomenon says something about the our current sexual climate. We can now admit that "bro jobs" are happening, and happening often. Though where they take place is often indicative of how people expect others to digest the news of these rendezvous. “I hear a lot about secrets,” says Block. The fact that society is starting to have more open discussions about sex is good. The fact that society only wants to discuss certain kinds of sex leaves something to be desired. But if we take a step back we might find that what traditionalists deem “unnatural” sexual behavior (i.e. anything outside the confines of heterosexual marriage) can be fairly intrinsic. However those participating in them want to self-identify is up to them. Block suggests we take a look at our closest "kissing cousins," the Bonobo. In her book, The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace Through Pleasure, Block explains that the apes often engage in what’s known as “penis fencing,” whereby two males will rub their erect penises against each other’s. She told us, “They stop each other from killing each other by rub rub rubbing, until they come come come. And then have a banana together or something," adding, "I think there’s a very positive and certainly very natural aspect to this.”

Continue Reading...

It’s not all about you, Bruce and Bono: This is why the Rock Hall is so lame

The history of rock and pop is like a giant iceberg: Only a tiny portion of it is readily visible. Rock’n’roll can engage you, entertain you and obsess you, regardless of whether you’re aware of the entire iceberg, just the tip, or anywhere in between. In order to love Bruce Springsteen, you don’t have to also know about Ramblin’ Jack Elliot; to enjoy Green Day, you don’t necessarily have to know who Stiff Little Fingers or D.O.A. are; and you can be enthralled by the power of Arcade Fire without ever having heard Pere Ubu, Stereolab, or the Feelies. Like a fractal, the endless permeations of rock and pop are both complete unto themselves and astounding when viewed from a larger perspective. Creating a monument to the beautiful, complex and diverse history of rock and pop is an exceedingly difficult task. This makes the idea and successful execution of “The” Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame very challenging (creating a fish-tank full of Hall of Fames targeted towards specific genres and interests would be a more realistic enterprise, though certainly less appealing to HBO). To further complicate matters, those who run the Hall apply a personal bias that diminishes the already limited credibility of the enterprise. Last week, I addressed one outstanding omission to the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame (Kraftwerk). But there’s a lot more to say, including what the new crop of nominees reveal about the organization. First, let’s address how personal bias is clearly altering the complexion of the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. I only need to say three names: New York Dolls, Todd Rundgren, and the MC5. All clearly belong in any institution honoring creative and stylistic musical innovators who also achieved a high public profile (the omission of the Dolls, inarguably one of the most influential acts in the history of the genre, is especially confounding). These exclusions are so heinous that one can only conclude that somehow, something about these particular acts got under somebody’s skin. If one or more people have the ability to veto deserving artists just because of personal bias, we can basically toss the entire legitimacy of the enterprise out the window. Other omissions may not be personal, but instead reflect a consistent artistic bias of the Hall. For instance, the Carpenters made exquisite pop records constructed with a grace and skill comparable to Brian Wilson, George Martin, and Phil Spector; they were also a huge part of people’s lives and a generational touchstone. They belong in the Hall as much as other high-pop acts like the Mamas and the Papas, Neil Diamond, and Abba (all selections I agree with, by the way), yet clearly the “While we were listening to Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers in the 1970s we thought (fill in the blank) were uncool” bias of the Hall is going to block their entry. How about the Monkees?  They made fantastic music, they contained at least one bona fide musical genius (Michael Nesmith), and they produced not only one of the best rock films ever made (Head), but the strangest and most combative rock TV special ever produced (33 1/3rdRevolutions Per Monkee, which is nothing short of a 60-minute acid blues prime time freak out). But I sincerely doubt the Monkees will ever get in the Hall. Now, listen, and listen close: Joan Jett began her career in a manufactured band, and her most famous hits were written by other artists; it’s arguable (but barely) that she is as artificial a construction as the Monkees, and she’s in the Hall. And true, the Monkees didn’t play instruments on their early hits, but the Dave Clark 5 are in the Hall, and drummer Dave Clark didn’t play on any of his own hit records. A further problem – and a big one -- is that the people operating the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame may know something about the genre, but they don’t know enough. For instance, the 1920s/30s minstrel singer Emmett Miller not only helped mainstream the blues, but his inventive and pioneering vocal style influenced everyone from Hank Williams to Bob Dylan; in his own way, Miller belongs in the Hall as much as Chuck Berry does, but that’ll happen around the same time Jann Wenner calls and asks me to write about Neu! More shockingly, Alan Lomax, the ethnomusicologist and archivist who recorded some of the most important music of the 20th Century (and whose recordings taught everyone from Dylan to the Stones to Zeppelin about authentic American roots music), isn’t in the Hall. I say, without reservation, that Lomax should have been in the first or second Hall of Fame class. Another flaw of the Hall is a tendency to not pay enough attention to the United Kingdom. Any rock fan outside of the United States would literally find it laughable that Thin Lizzy hasn’t been inducted. And the same applies to Mott the Hoople, another inexplicable omission caused by a careless and ignorant attitude towards British music (they’re trying to make up for that this year by nominating the Smiths, but where’s Joy Division, New Order, or the Cure?). Oh, and don’t get me started on Motorhead and Slayer. Just don’t. They’re only two of the most influential and visible rock acts of the last quarter century. On to the 2016 nominees. Cheap Trick certainly belongs in any Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame; they have credibility, quality, influence, and visibility. But if Cheap Trick are in the Hall, what about Electric Light Orchestra and the Move, two popular bands that were fundamental influences on Cheap Trick? Where do you draw the line and say, “This band is visible, innovative, and popular, but not visible, innovative and popular enough; this act had great influence, but they didn’t influence Springsteen the bands we care about?” I can’t stand Yes, but they probably belong in the hall. They made conceptually interesting and unique music and were a big part of people’s lives. Chicago are trickier. They were on the radio a lot and they did vaguely interesting things, but are they Hall of Famers? I mean, Madness are a hell of a lot more interesting and ginormous in the UK, but I don’t think anyone’s in a rush to put them in. Steve Miller was also popular during an era that was personally significant to the Hall’s higher-ups and voters; however, Miller had a creative and inventive spark that Chicago lacked, so personally, I’d vote no on Chicago and yes on Miller. The Cars, an inconsistent and contrived (but generationally significant) band that came up with some very good singles, are probably on their way in, but the idea that they’re going in before Roxy Music or the Modern Lovers is ludicrous. Personally, I’d vote no, unless I knew for sure that they would hand their award to Jonathan Richman, Bryan Ferry, and Brian Eno. Deep Purple are a no-brainer, a dynamic and influential band who absolutely belong in the Hall. You can’t write the story of heavy metal without them. I’m not a huge fan of Nine Inch Nails, but regardless, NIN are influential, innovative, and successful, and they’re a stone cold yes. I’m probably a weak yes on Chic, a much weaker yes on Chaka Khan, on the fence-leaning-to-yes on the Spinners and on the fence-leaning-to-no on the J.B.s The J.B.’s are a band of great power and nearly historic impact, but I think regularly inducting bands primarily known via their association with other artists is a dangerous raft to climb on (and one that already sailed, thanks to the ridiculous induction of the E Street Band). Call me when you induct The Witnesses (Louis Prima’s amazing, honking, rollicking and rocking band); then I’ll reconsider. I don’t think Janet Jackson was any great innovator, and if we’re going to induct state-of-the-art-pop artists who sold gazillions, I’d once again say, “Where are the Carpenters?” But she will draw viewers to the HBO induction show, so that’s a done deal. Listen, rock’n’roll isn't any one thing. It’s the sound of America's disenfranchised and dispossessed cultures, celebrated, mainstreamed and displayed as art. It’s the angry but ecstatic dynamite of the MC5 and the apocalyptic beauty of Tim Buckley; it’s the dirt-yard hallelujahs of Sid Hemphill and the whorehouse hosannas of ZZ Top; it’s the Southern California Car Dreams of the Beach Boys and the Hollywood Hills Bad Dreams of the Beach Boys. Any attempt to memorialize it within any single building or organization is destined to fail. But it would be nice if the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame tried just a little harder; I’d recommend taking a closer look at U.K. innovators and hitmakers, I’d really crawl into the historical alleys where people like Lomax and Miller lie, and most of all, to retain any shred of legitimacy, they have to find a way around the all-too-obvious personal biases that erode the credibility of the Hall enormously.The history of rock and pop is like a giant iceberg: Only a tiny portion of it is readily visible. Rock’n’roll can engage you, entertain you and obsess you, regardless of whether you’re aware of the entire iceberg, just the tip, or anywhere in between. In order to love Bruce Springsteen, you don’t have to also know about Ramblin’ Jack Elliot; to enjoy Green Day, you don’t necessarily have to know who Stiff Little Fingers or D.O.A. are; and you can be enthralled by the power of Arcade Fire without ever having heard Pere Ubu, Stereolab, or the Feelies. Like a fractal, the endless permeations of rock and pop are both complete unto themselves and astounding when viewed from a larger perspective. Creating a monument to the beautiful, complex and diverse history of rock and pop is an exceedingly difficult task. This makes the idea and successful execution of “The” Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame very challenging (creating a fish-tank full of Hall of Fames targeted towards specific genres and interests would be a more realistic enterprise, though certainly less appealing to HBO). To further complicate matters, those who run the Hall apply a personal bias that diminishes the already limited credibility of the enterprise. Last week, I addressed one outstanding omission to the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame (Kraftwerk). But there’s a lot more to say, including what the new crop of nominees reveal about the organization. First, let’s address how personal bias is clearly altering the complexion of the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. I only need to say three names: New York Dolls, Todd Rundgren, and the MC5. All clearly belong in any institution honoring creative and stylistic musical innovators who also achieved a high public profile (the omission of the Dolls, inarguably one of the most influential acts in the history of the genre, is especially confounding). These exclusions are so heinous that one can only conclude that somehow, something about these particular acts got under somebody’s skin. If one or more people have the ability to veto deserving artists just because of personal bias, we can basically toss the entire legitimacy of the enterprise out the window. Other omissions may not be personal, but instead reflect a consistent artistic bias of the Hall. For instance, the Carpenters made exquisite pop records constructed with a grace and skill comparable to Brian Wilson, George Martin, and Phil Spector; they were also a huge part of people’s lives and a generational touchstone. They belong in the Hall as much as other high-pop acts like the Mamas and the Papas, Neil Diamond, and Abba (all selections I agree with, by the way), yet clearly the “While we were listening to Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers in the 1970s we thought (fill in the blank) were uncool” bias of the Hall is going to block their entry. How about the Monkees?  They made fantastic music, they contained at least one bona fide musical genius (Michael Nesmith), and they produced not only one of the best rock films ever made (Head), but the strangest and most combative rock TV special ever produced (33 1/3rdRevolutions Per Monkee, which is nothing short of a 60-minute acid blues prime time freak out). But I sincerely doubt the Monkees will ever get in the Hall. Now, listen, and listen close: Joan Jett began her career in a manufactured band, and her most famous hits were written by other artists; it’s arguable (but barely) that she is as artificial a construction as the Monkees, and she’s in the Hall. And true, the Monkees didn’t play instruments on their early hits, but the Dave Clark 5 are in the Hall, and drummer Dave Clark didn’t play on any of his own hit records. A further problem – and a big one -- is that the people operating the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame may know something about the genre, but they don’t know enough. For instance, the 1920s/30s minstrel singer Emmett Miller not only helped mainstream the blues, but his inventive and pioneering vocal style influenced everyone from Hank Williams to Bob Dylan; in his own way, Miller belongs in the Hall as much as Chuck Berry does, but that’ll happen around the same time Jann Wenner calls and asks me to write about Neu! More shockingly, Alan Lomax, the ethnomusicologist and archivist who recorded some of the most important music of the 20th Century (and whose recordings taught everyone from Dylan to the Stones to Zeppelin about authentic American roots music), isn’t in the Hall. I say, without reservation, that Lomax should have been in the first or second Hall of Fame class. Another flaw of the Hall is a tendency to not pay enough attention to the United Kingdom. Any rock fan outside of the United States would literally find it laughable that Thin Lizzy hasn’t been inducted. And the same applies to Mott the Hoople, another inexplicable omission caused by a careless and ignorant attitude towards British music (they’re trying to make up for that this year by nominating the Smiths, but where’s Joy Division, New Order, or the Cure?). Oh, and don’t get me started on Motorhead and Slayer. Just don’t. They’re only two of the most influential and visible rock acts of the last quarter century. On to the 2016 nominees. Cheap Trick certainly belongs in any Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame; they have credibility, quality, influence, and visibility. But if Cheap Trick are in the Hall, what about Electric Light Orchestra and the Move, two popular bands that were fundamental influences on Cheap Trick? Where do you draw the line and say, “This band is visible, innovative, and popular, but not visible, innovative and popular enough; this act had great influence, but they didn’t influence Springsteen the bands we care about?” I can’t stand Yes, but they probably belong in the hall. They made conceptually interesting and unique music and were a big part of people’s lives. Chicago are trickier. They were on the radio a lot and they did vaguely interesting things, but are they Hall of Famers? I mean, Madness are a hell of a lot more interesting and ginormous in the UK, but I don’t think anyone’s in a rush to put them in. Steve Miller was also popular during an era that was personally significant to the Hall’s higher-ups and voters; however, Miller had a creative and inventive spark that Chicago lacked, so personally, I’d vote no on Chicago and yes on Miller. The Cars, an inconsistent and contrived (but generationally significant) band that came up with some very good singles, are probably on their way in, but the idea that they’re going in before Roxy Music or the Modern Lovers is ludicrous. Personally, I’d vote no, unless I knew for sure that they would hand their award to Jonathan Richman, Bryan Ferry, and Brian Eno. Deep Purple are a no-brainer, a dynamic and influential band who absolutely belong in the Hall. You can’t write the story of heavy metal without them. I’m not a huge fan of Nine Inch Nails, but regardless, NIN are influential, innovative, and successful, and they’re a stone cold yes. I’m probably a weak yes on Chic, a much weaker yes on Chaka Khan, on the fence-leaning-to-yes on the Spinners and on the fence-leaning-to-no on the J.B.s The J.B.’s are a band of great power and nearly historic impact, but I think regularly inducting bands primarily known via their association with other artists is a dangerous raft to climb on (and one that already sailed, thanks to the ridiculous induction of the E Street Band). Call me when you induct The Witnesses (Louis Prima’s amazing, honking, rollicking and rocking band); then I’ll reconsider. I don’t think Janet Jackson was any great innovator, and if we’re going to induct state-of-the-art-pop artists who sold gazillions, I’d once again say, “Where are the Carpenters?” But she will draw viewers to the HBO induction show, so that’s a done deal. Listen, rock’n’roll isn't any one thing. It’s the sound of America's disenfranchised and dispossessed cultures, celebrated, mainstreamed and displayed as art. It’s the angry but ecstatic dynamite of the MC5 and the apocalyptic beauty of Tim Buckley; it’s the dirt-yard hallelujahs of Sid Hemphill and the whorehouse hosannas of ZZ Top; it’s the Southern California Car Dreams of the Beach Boys and the Hollywood Hills Bad Dreams of the Beach Boys. Any attempt to memorialize it within any single building or organization is destined to fail. But it would be nice if the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame tried just a little harder; I’d recommend taking a closer look at U.K. innovators and hitmakers, I’d really crawl into the historical alleys where people like Lomax and Miller lie, and most of all, to retain any shred of legitimacy, they have to find a way around the all-too-obvious personal biases that erode the credibility of the Hall enormously.

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Love “Fargo” but hate “True Detective?”: Inside the good, the bad and the ugly of TV’s prestige anthology shows

You may have heard that we have a lot of good television these days. As David Carr wrote in this 2014 column, “In the short span of five years, table talk has shifted, at least among the people I socialize with, from books and movies to television. The idiot box gained heft and intellectual credibility to the point where you seem dumb if you are not watching it.” And in the space of prestige TV—that niche of expensive and critically acclaimed television, made for that niche of wealthy and critical audiences—you’re dumbest of all if you’re not hip to “anthology series,” a fancy-sounding name for a show that reboots its premise with some regularity. (Often, it switches up the actors, too, though that’s not a requirement.) It’s a phrase that gets used a lot today, but anthology series are nearly as old as television and haven’t gone anywhere, though they have changed quite a bit. The heyday of the anthology series was in the 1950s, when American audiences were looking for theater, literally, on television. There’s a lot to say on this topic—Stephen Bowie wrote an in-depth piece for the A.V. Club last year on “Playhouse 90,” a CBS anthology series that swept the Emmys in 1957 with its high quality, huge budget, and live broadcasts. PBS’ ongoing “Masterpiece Theatre” is an extension of this same desire to see plays enacted on television, except exhibited in installments, over the course of a few weeks or months. But it’s not just theater. Thrillers like the iconic “The Twilight Zone” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”—and the decidedly less iconic Nickelodeon series “Are You Afraid Of The Dark?”—are also anthology series. Like everything else TV does, the format is an attempt to snag a consistent audience. Some shows go for serialization (“Lost”) or even hyperserialization (“All My Children”) in order to keep an audience interested. The anthology series has a different angle; it promises a thrill or a chill, but is always mixing up the how. As a result, the viewing experience is shot through with a bit more tension; the audience can’t expect the same actors, relationships, or storylines that got them interested in the first place. Currently, anthology miniseries represent a middle ground between film and television—even more of a middle ground than traditional prestige drama, which often stretched to five, six, or seven seasons. An anthology promises a collection of stories that definitively end, instead of trickle off; but it also promises eight or 10 or 12 installments of each story, to develop over a few months. The boundedness of the format means that movie stars like Matthew McConaughey, Felicity Huffman, and Jessica Lange can be drawn into starring roles without being tied to a years-long contract. It also means a viewer can join the show in season four and still watch a complete story. And as evidenced by how all four of the anthology miniseries on air right now are headed by distinctive showrunners, the format offers a canvas for an incredible exploration of style. But though each one has had elements of brilliance, there isn’t one that is peerless — “True Detective”’s second season was a failure, “Fargo” has too many weird wannabe problems to be really great, “American Crime” is a bit too broadcast-network boring, and “American Horror Story” is out of its goddamn mind. That’s a lot of time and money spent on four shows when none of them are the next “Mad Men” or “Breaking Bad.” I think this is because each series is trying so hard to be relevant and popular, albeit in four rather different ways. Anthology miniseries have been packaged and presented as the next big thing for studios as well as audiences, and each one has its own tragic flaw. “True Detective,” the most well-known series, has the most romantic origin story possible—unknown writer Nic Pizzolatto creating a script on a shadow and a dream, and then somehow getting it noticed by A-lister Matthew McConaughey, who angled to play Rust Cohle and attracted fellow star Woody Harrelson to the project. “True Detective” was the subject of a bidding war in spring 2012, as HBO, Showtime, and FX battled over it. HBO, as we know, won this battle. Showtime stepped out of the anthology miniseries game. FX went on immediately to create “Fargo,” in a studio-driven creative process that is almost the exact opposite of Pizzolatto’s lonely scribbling. FX teamed up with MGM’s television arm to choose a movie to adapt into a series. The Coen Brothers’ cult hit “Fargo” was selected from a list. It’s no wonder, then, that “True Detective”’s fiery appeal crashed and burned in season two, as the extremely inexperienced Pizzolatto made every second-season mistake in the book, along with taking some time for petty digs at critics, his former colleagues, and the industry at large. And it's similarly no wonder that “Fargo” has felt frustratingly derivative right from the start, as its well-compensated characters take on the Minnesotan accent that “Fargo,” the film, drew out from obscurity and lent charm through the studied musings of Frances McDormand. Meanwhile, though “American Horror Story” is the show that inspired “True Detective”’s Nic Pizzolatto to build his spec script in anthology form, Ryan Murphy’s creation became an anthology series almost after the fact. The first season has been retroactively dubbed “Murder House,” but when the show debuted, FX didn’t package the show as an anthology—either hedging on the idea of a changing premise every season or worrying that audiences, confused by the format, might not tune in. When “American Horror Story” stuck with the anthology format—now in its fifth iteration, with “Hotel”—viewers and critics stuck with it, too, taken by both the wild gyrations of Murphy’s style and the incredible talent he drew to the show, including Lange, Kathy Bates, and Sarah Paulson. But the format has also exacerbated a lot of Murphy’s longstanding issues with continuity and character development, flattening the show into an hours-long music video. And “American Crime,” on ABC, is good, but deadly earnest—after-school special earnest. The show boasts more focus on diversity than any of the other series—“American Horror Story” is a study in fantastic and diverse casting, but “American Crime” is saturated with the politics of race relations. It’s brought to screen by John Ridley, screenwriter for Oscar winner “12 Years A Slave.” And of all these shows, it is most like HBO’s heralded “The Wire”—but without that show’s dry wit and coarse speech, because you know, broadcast. The portrayal of addiction feels a little too Hollywood, and the pronouncements of racism a little too convenient. It’s a reminder of both why we love television and why prestige TV was so thrilling when it first appeared on the scene in the late ‘90s—broadcast’s circumspectness is understandable and even necessary, but it’s also so cathartic to engage in the issues of the day with the invective, grit, and physicality that is only possible on cable. For all that “anthology miniseries” is a fancy-sounding phrase with many syllables, it’s not a guarantor of quality. It’s more that “anthology miniseries” is the label we give our most ambitious experiments. And you don’t always want to be in the same room as ambitious experiments—haven’t we learned anything from comic books? Still, what is true for Spider-Man is true for us, too—there are rewards to be reaped, along with the risks. Just wear your safety goggles.

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Dying is never easy: Assisted suicide doesn’t necessarily help us have a “good death”

Governor Jerry Brown has just signed a measure making California the fifth state in the country to legalize physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. A former Jesuit seminary student, Gov. Brown openly voiced conflicting feelings over the bill, but claims he ultimately does not want to deny people the right to end of life options. As a pro-choice liberal with a background working in hospice, most people I know assume I am enthusiastic about the passing of this measure, but the truth is that it gives me pause. When I was 25 years old my father asked me to help him die. We were standing in his bedroom and he was in the mechanical hospital bed the hospice team had installed. I had just finished brushing his dentures, and they were still drying in my hand, when he proposed the idea that I compile all of his pain meds and help him ingest them. I placed the dentures gently on the swiveling table at his bedside and told him I needed to think about it. Alone in the living room I stood before the sliding glass doors of my father’s Orange County condominium and watched some neighbor kids playing in the pool. I would have done anything my father asked of me. I had already quit my job so that I could care for him. I had defied his team of doctors who urged me to place him in a skilled care facility, and I had moved into his condo with him, so that he could live out his final weeks in his own home. I slept with a baby monitor next to my pillow, starting out of my sleep every night when I heard his voice. But this? Helping him die? Something about it didn’t feel right. I wouldn’t be able to put my finger on what that feeling was until nearly seven years later, long after he was gone. I had been working as a hospice grief counselor in Chicago for nearly four years, and was preparing for the birth of my first child. I spent my days driving around the snowy Illinois suburbs helping people care for their dying loved ones, just as I had with my father. All that long winter while my belly grew so large that I could barely fit behind the wheel of my car, I was struck by the differences in the ways we welcome life into this world, and the ways in which we pay homage to its end. During my pregnancy I was thrown multiple baby showers, invested hours in birthing classes, employed a doula and a midwife, lit candles as I wrote letters to my yet-to-be-born child, and both inwardly and outwardly celebrated the coming change in my life. The contrast to the hushed and somber homes in which I watched people meeting the end of their lives was stark. The air was often thick with fear, sadness and resistance. There were no rituals, no ceremonies, and very few blessings bestowed upon the end of life. It turns out that as the human race has extended life well into our eighties and nineties, we have also turned away from facing death. One of the issues most commonly faced by hospices across the country is the problem of patients who sign up with only a day or two to live. Dr. BJ Miller of the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco reports that, “in 2012 forty-two percent of Californians died in hospice. That’s almost half. But a third of those were on hospice for less than a week.” Of this dilemma he goes on to explain that, “in a day or two we can get a little physical comfort for the patient, make a little space to dwell in the emotional realm, maybe have a reconciling conversation or two, and maybe eke out a salvaged, non-horrible death. That’s better than the alternative.” My mother’s death was a prime example of the alternative. Rather than opting for hospice at the end of her four-year battle with colon cancer, as her doctors advised, she continued seeking last-ditch treatments until her very last hours, where she died in the middle of the night in a hospital in Washington, D.C., without saying goodbye to those she loved, having failed to accept the end of her life. My father wanted his death to be different. He knew he was dying; he had accepted this, and he was seemingly at peace with it. His only wish was to do it in his own home. And so on that day when he asked me for help ending his life, something in me balked. Wasn’t the whole point of this to face it? To be present to death? Unable to bring myself to respond to my father’s request, I instead confided in the hospice nurse. I felt as though I was betraying my father by doing so, but what happened next would ease this concern. The nurse gave me a sad, warm smile and told me something that I would see play out in so many of the homes I would later work in myself. “Dying isn’t easy,” she said to me. “But there are so many things we can do to make someone more comfortable.” She explained that she wanted to explore the reasons my father wanted to hasten his already impending death. Was it possible that his medications needed to be adjusted, that he was experiencing more pain than was necessary? Or was there perhaps something causing him psychological discomfort? It turned out that it was both. He was in pain, something the hospice team was able to remedy with adjustments to his medication, but more importantly, he was worried about something. He admitted that he felt burdensome. The guilt he felt about letting me give over my life to take care of the end of his was weighing on him greatly. I assured him that I was dedicated to sharing his final days with him, no matter how difficult they might be, and I promised him that I would be there, holding his hand, when he took his final breaths. Those last weeks of his life were not easy, not for him or for me. But they also were not in any way painful or horrific. There were, in fact, many peaceful hours spent, with my father both in and out of consciousness as he slowly ventured towards the end. In his lucid moments we looked into each other’s old, familiar eyes and said beautiful and necessary things to each other. And when he was gone I had no regrets about how he left, or what the circumstances were that led up to his departure, something I very much felt following my mother’s passing, and something I see so often in the clients I counsel through their grief process. Ever since my father died, ever since witnessing what Miller refers to as a “good death,” I have come to hold a deep reverence for the process of dying. I ultimately support California’s new End of Life bill because I think people should have as much freedom as possible when it comes to their own medical decisions, and I also do not believe people should suffer unnecessarily. But I do think that the actual process of dying should not be overlooked, nor hastened, in cases when there is much that can be done to make it comfortable. Let us not always leap to the last page without at least skimming the last chapter. My concern about this new measure is that although it appears on the outside to allow us to embrace death in significant way, in certain cases it will also provide a way for us to shrink from it. I do believe that there are cases in which physician-assisted suicide can eliminate potential weeks and months of suffering, but my fear is that some patients will choose assisted suicide as a way of circumnavigating issues that could have been otherwise addressed, such as fear, guilt, and sadness. My hope is that the physicians who are signing off on assisted suicide are asking the same questions that the hospice nurse asked of my father, and that they are looking at all the factors contributing to a patient’s wish to end their life. My father died naturally only a few weeks after that conversation with the nurse, and I was there holding his hand when he took his last breaths. In those last days we had some of our most profound conversations, moments I’m so grateful we were able to have. His last words to me were, “If there were no death, we would never know how sweet life really is.”

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