The New Black

[Careers in non-profit organizations are the new black]

Here's a thought: Careers at non-profits are the new magazine jobs. Let me explain. So, I was IMing my friend yesterday when we got on a pretty familiar topic.


Friend: I don't know. I think [my magazine freelancer friend] is actually leaning in another direction outside of journalism now.

Mags are over.
me: here here!
me: i think i'd like to go into nonprofits when my mag career is over

NP's are the new mag

Friend: I like that.

The demise of the magazine industry is a popular point of discussion among Journalism alums (myself included), so I've had some time to think about what my post-magazine career should be, and a non-profit is the perfect fit.

Consider this: Both careers offer fashionably low pay rates, stylishly dressed co-workers (albeit, a different sort of style) and that self-righteous attitude that can only come with industries populated by upper class white people.

To further prove my point, Stuff White People Like rated Unpaid Internships in both fields #105 on their list. They said, "White people view the internship as their foot into the door to such high-profile low-paying career fields as journalism, film, politics, art, non-profits, and anything associated with a museum. Any white person who takes an internship outside of these industries is either the wrong type of white person or a law student. There are no exceptions."

[Lisa Bonet, clutching one of her babies at the Farmers Market. How much of a stereotype can you be?]

And if the quick-to-spend, quick-to-drink Carrie Bradshaw was the woman du jour of the '90s, certainly altruistic Earth mothers like Angelina Jolie and Lisa Bonet are the It girls every yuppie or buppie worth her salt aspires to in this decade.

Media, Magazines, and Me

I have an on-again, off-again love affair with women's magazines. It's well-documented throughout this blog, if you care to take a look. For example, after swearing off the book as an overrated, grown-up version of Seventeen, I bought a copy of Cosmopolitan this weekend (for research, though) and actually enjoyed flipping through it. Yes, there are much better ways to feed my mind, but sometimes it feels good to get lost in a trashy romance novel (see Cosmo's red-hot read section) or take a silly quiz about your commitment style.

[This is the issue I bought, and it rocks]

I recently listened to an old episode of Fresh Air on NPR that featured Zadie Smith. Being a literary novelist, one wouldn't expect her to be all that keen on non-news magazines, and she wasn't. She said something that struck me and stayed with me:

[Zadie Smith, author of novels like White Teeth and On Beauty]

I was glad there were no magazines for black women when I was a kid because I didn't want to read that stuff. And when I do read a lot of magazines about women I just feel very depressed and very alienated and very sad...The idea of being publicly represented, even though it was a big idea in the 80s and 90s, I think every representation is a generalization. I'd rather be my particular weirdo self than have a magazine called, I don't know, Mixed-Race Girls. I'd just rather be my own mixed-race girl, I don't really want advice on how to be a mixed-race girl.

Keep in mind that she's British, so maybe she wasn't aware of magazines like Essence or Honey when she was a teen or young adult. But I've never really been able to sum up what bothers me about women's magazines until I heard her say "I don't really want advice on how to be a mixed-race girl." I've hinted that all the self-help tips annoy me, but that seems like a really succinct way to say that most lifestyle content is about being better in some way, which is always a disaster.

Also keep in mind that I pen lifestyle content for a living, so I may be biased.


-- Whitney

On Mother's Day

On Mother's Day, I have a whole lot to be thankful for, and a lot of that is wrapped up in Ronda, my mom.

I'm so thankful that she lived to raise me. I'm so thankful that she loved me, and nurtured me, and put up with my stubborness, and taught me any number of really cool things. Among them: how to make a Dairy Queen blizzard at home, how to hem my jeans, how to be a good Christian woman, how to fill out a job application and how to effectively complain about bad service at a a restaurant. I think that last one comes in handy the most.

Beyond childhood, I'm thankful that I can pick up the phone and call my mom whenever I want. My cousins, who lost their mom when they were 18 and 25 respectively, aren't that lucky. I feel bad when my mom calls and I groan, roll my eyes skyward and dejectedly say, "Hello?!" I know that I should cherish the time that I have with her in my life, since more moments with her aren't promised.

I'm thankful that she taught me to be a good daughter and a good sister. Her and my granny were so close, they were like best friends. They called each other all day long and saw each other everyday. My mom was well into her 30s and my granny was still washing, drying and folding her clothes. And those of me and my sister, too. What can I say: the perks of being the baby of the family. My mom is also best friends with her older sisters (she has four of them). Two of them have passed away, but they were an extremely close unit of women. I learned by example that a sister is the very best thing in the world a girl can have, and nothing, not money or men, friendship or job, should weaken that bond.

I'm thankful that she loves me. Totally, unconditionally, fully and without preamble, in a way that I probably will never understand unless I have kids of my own. When I hurt, she hurts. When I'm glad, she's glad.

I'm thankful that she taught me to be my own woman. To not let others' opinions or wills dictate my life. When I was 16, she let me go off to a boarding school, even though she told me (years later) that she cried for days before I left. She knew it was a great opportunity and wasn't selfish with me. When I was 18, she put her foot down and said that I couldn't go all the way to Washington to attend Howard University. I went anyway, and I'm thankful that she challenged me. It let me realize how strong I was.

And, finally, I'm thankful that she is who she is, because it has allowed me to be who I am.

Animals: They're Just Like Us

I had the pleasure of seeing earth last week with two of my girls, and I loved it! Of course, halfway through the movie, Nicole leaned over to me and said, "This is amazing. Most of this footage was on the Discovery channel show 'Planet Earth.'" Damn! So I just paid $8 (I buy the children's tickets at the kiosk. Shh, don't tell) to see something that other folks saw for free?! Well, on the show they have Sigourney Weaver narrating while the movie featured James Earl Jones, but still.

This segment of the series (I believe it will be three parts; the next part is Ocean coming Earth Day 2010) focused on mommies and babies around the planet. There was a polar bear family, a herd of elephants and a humpback whale with her baby, along with some other interesting characters thrown in.

Even if you're not nature-y (I'm completely not), you'll appreciate the careful storytelling and magnificent score of the movie. I was glued to the screen, feeling nearly every emotion along with the on-screen families. I was heartbroken when a baby elephant lost his mother in a cloud of dessert sand. He managed to follow his mom's footprints and set off on a trail, only in the wrong direction. When the humpback and her calf literally crossed the world in search of delicious vittles, I was tense as they navigated treacherous waters and were forced to loudly flap their wings so that the other would know that they were present and safe. And the adorable polar bear cubs! Seeing their first, exciting adventure outside of the cave that they were born in, watch them learn to walk on the slippery snow and eventually leave mama bear's cave, was really really cute.

Something that I kept thinking is how fortunate we humans are to have hands. The elephant, the polar bear and the humpback could only will their babies to stay close to them, and were unable to scoop them up and carry them. My friend Latrice said that I was applying human emotions to animals, but I think that we're wrong to underestimate the complexity of non-human intellect and emotion. I'm certain that any mom, human or polar bear, wishes for more ways to keep their babies close and safe from danger.

I also couldn't help but make a couple of food chain comparisons. The elephants that were forced to make themselves vulnerable to hungry lions at the watering hole, the shark that came out of nowhere to take a bite out of some very large mammal. Even though there isn't another animal out there that naturally eats humans, people are pretty good at making themselves predatory. Credit card companies, mortgage lenders, slumlords and companies that feed on the poor (hey Wal-Mart!) all come to mind when I think of human predators.

earth is a freakishly enjoyable movie, full of brilliant images, haunting music and the gentle pride that is James Earl Jones' voice. Go see immediately!

-- Whitney

Girl Genius Over Here!

[No idea what this picture has to do with anything]

Have you ever come across an old email, or letter, or story and thought, "Wow, I wrote that?" We all walk around with the vague impression that we're competent and maybe mildly intelligent (well, at least I do), but every once in awhile we're forced to sit up, look in the mirror, grin slyly and think, "Damn, you're fierce."

This happened to me today as I was going through my emails from last summer. I was trying to find the cute little tree do-hicky that Hearst Corp. puts on the end of their emails that say, like, don't print this email or the Earth will perish, or something to that effect. I ran across my application to become a style writer for my absolute favorite website, Jezebel. I was just a young buck then. 22-years old, interning with the uber-fab Translation and looking for a full-time editorial gig. My cover letter (which is excerpted below) scored me an interview with the company, the opportunity to do an edit test, but no cigar. Still, I think it was pretty hot. I wrote:

The writing bug hit me around 2^nd grade (with no warning and quite rudely) and my dream since then was to work for a glossy, women's magazine. Through the years I regularly sated my fixation by devouring Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, and Marie Claire and the like before I came to the realization that the magazines, collectively, kind of suck (this category, of course, excludes Jane. May she rest in peace). Besides lacking in substance and ignoring real issues that real women deal with, they exist on the presumed platform that women are wack and need to improve. Get Thinner Thighs! Shiny Hair is Yours Now! Make Him Want You!

Where is the voice that gives a big, jovial high-five to women as they are? The presence that says you and your beer belly are fine the way that they are and, more importantly, the ice caps are melting, public schools are failing, our economy is in the tubes and John McCain is actually serious about becoming president—these are of equal importance. So, though I love to write about women and what's relevant to us, I'd rather do it at place that includes all that we are, not just weight-loss and/or sex tips. Enter Jezebel, Stage Right.

Amazingly, I still feel that way. Of course I looked at the letter and immediately spotted some punctuation errors that I wish I could go back and correct, but c'est la vie.

--Whitney

Weird Girls

[Lady GaGa]

If you read this blog even a little bit, then I'm assuming you're a bit of a weird girl/guy. After all, the whole premise of the site was to create a space for me to put my unique, quirky, and always weird spin on everything from pop culture to politics to style.

I've always been a little weird. Ask my mom, my sister, my aunts or cousins and they'll probably tell you that they always thought that girl was strange. I read a whole lot, I could be a little withdrawn in social and family settings and I never felt like I fit in growing up in my hometown. Fast-forward 20-something years and I know that all those things were mandatory experiences for an aspiring writing. I mean, when was the last time a book about being perfect and having all the answers won a Pulitzer?

Music has always been a place for weirdos. See Prince, Sinead O'Connor, Tupac and Erykah Badu. And being different has always been sort of a gimmack, I guess. But the onslaught of weird girls, arguably the first generation of strangies really allowed to roam and be themselves, have been marketed, monetized and analyzed to the nth degree. I'm talking about Amy Winehouse, Janelle Monae, my new favorite Lady GaGa and a slew of others that I'm forgetting. Solange, Rihanna and the like were always sort of the commercialized version of weird, so I won't include them.

As I was jamming to The Fame in the car this weekend, I began to think how absolutely cool it is to listen to an album by a woman writer who isn't constantly waxing pathetic about her man. Yes, that is a not-so-subtle nod to the Beyonces, Jazmine Sullivans, Monicas and Keri Hilsons of the world. I love their music, but a girl needs a break from all that heartache.

I heart GaGa even more after reading quotes like these:

"Because of Amy [Winehouse] very strange girls like me go to prom with very good-looking guys."

Heart, heart, heart her. Long live all the weird girls of the world.




-- Whitney

Remembering Bea

[Bea Arthur]

I didn't want to start this post with lyrics from "Thank You For Being a Friend," because, frankly, I'm tired of the deluge of media folk referencing that song. I actually didn't know how to start this post. I've watched "Golden Girls" since 1990, when I was 5 years old and used to snuggle up to my g-ma and watch GG and "Empty Nest" back to back after the 10 o'clock news on Channel 5. The room would be ice cold (we're Southerners. No heat gets in our home.) and my granny would have on her silky nightgown. She would cackle all throughout the thirty minute episodes. I would laugh too, but mostly at the facial expressions or physical stuff, since I had no idea what menopause, Fez Parker or impotence meant.

Between 1990 and today, I have never stopped watching that show. Reruns on Lifetime, then I bought the DVDs, plus watching them on YouTube, the show is just as much alive to me (and many of my Black, 20-something friends) today as it was in the 80s and 90s.

As I got older, it wasn't just Dorothy's deep voice or Rose's confused expression that made me laugh; I started to understand the jokes. Rose was even more naive than I was in seventh grade. Blanche was waaaay too hot in the pants to be post-menopausal. Dorothy and Sophia were the funniest mother/daughter duo I've ever seen on screen.

So, of course I was deeply saddened when Estelle Getty, famous for playing little, minxy Sophia, passed away. And when my sister texted me Saturday afternoon that Bea Arthur was gone, I was gone. I had dug up my first season DVDs earlier that day out of boredom and was watching the hilarity that started it all when I heard the news. I wonder if, by some strange chance, my deep, deep devotion to the show had led me to those episodes? Don't laugh, it's possible!

How can I put into words how amazing Bea was? We all know she was funny and intelligent and unflinching in her portrayal of all sides of a woman. I wasn't aware until recently that she was a staunch supporter of AIDS awareness and animal rights. Ashleigh told me that she also hated cheesecake. Really?!

She was my favorite Golden Girl, the one who I most identified with. And, since many other bloggers have echoed the same sentiment, I'd be willing to guess that she was the most popular; probably because she was everywoman, in a way.

Before "Sex and the City," before "Living Single," before "Girlfriends," there were four single ladies living it up in a stucco house in Miami, eating cheesecake, telling stories, sharing joys and pain, for the world to see. Age was only a state of mind for them, as they were as active and vital as anyone else running across the primetime screen.

It goes without saying that I am mourning the loss of Bea, and what she represents.

Read other tributes to her:

Jezebel: Bea Arthur's Top 5 Contributions To Pop Culture
NPR: Cheers to 'Maude' Bea Arthur
The Cynical Ones: Bye, Bea
Afrobella: RIP Bea Arthur

-- Whitney