Financial Commentary for Bitch
Article: “Dollars, But No Sense”
Publication: Bitch Magazine
Date: Summer 2008
“Pass the tissues! Why you should have a good cry at work!”
Pulling the April 2008 issue of Marie Claire out of my mailbox, I felt my eyes roll skyward. Since when does crying at work stand in for legitimate career advice?
Unfortunately, warped ideas about women, careers, and money have plagued most of the major glossies, resulting in them eschewing factual information for superficial advice, safely swaddled in discussions of relationships and feelings—you know, safe topics that girls like.
And yet, the demand for female-oriented financial advice has never been higher. Suze Orman’s latest tome on women and money, Women & Money, was given away for free on Oprah’s website; 2.2. million copies have been purchased or downloaded in the year since the book was released. Women-focused business magazines like Pink and Bee have emerged to tap into the women entrepreneurial market, often serving up advice on personal finance alongside tips on taking your company to the next level. Blogs like Savvy Sugar talk career and personal bankbook-building, as well as delivering information on global trends in business and economics. And targeted magazines like Essence and Heart and Soul have been promoting financial advice within their pages for years. Magazines geared specifically toward black women have long known that financial advice is a selling point, often advertising on the front cover each issue’s piece on money. The April 2008 issue of Essence announces that you too can “Be a Rich Black Woman;” the previous month’s issue deployed the cover’s left side to entice its audience to “Make More Money.”
Mainstream women’s glossies just don’t seem to have caught on. While men’s magazines (not the porn kind) often offer solid financial advice, women’s magazines are still more interested in telling you how to spend your money rather than how to grow it. The male/ female coverage divide is best exemplified in two articles, one from Marie Claire and one from Maxim.
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TV Commentary for Vibe
Article: “The Cruelest Mirror”
Publication: Vibe Magazine
Date: April 2010
If the squawking housewives, ex-crack addicts and love triangles all make us cringe, why do we the people still tune in to Black reality TV?
We love to hate The Real Housewives of Atlanta. So says the stats: 2.7 million viewers during the season two premiere, easily outpacing Bravo TV’s more established Orange County and New York franchises by over a million viewers. What makes RHOA so special? The outbursts? The sketchy financial status of four out of five of the women? The wigs? Yes, yes, and yes. But also, because they look like us. The truth is grim: the landscape on the small screen is so uniformly pale that many of us desire to see any content geared toward a Black audience, even as we give it the side-eye.
African Americans are all over reality TV, and not because they’re on the road to Obama status. Keyshia Cole and her filter-less relatives, Terrell Owens the narcissistic athlete, and Tiny and Toya, with their aspirations to surpass baby-mama standing, have all landed shows that bank on stereotypes. The massive success of Flavor of Love spawned an entire industry of spin-offs: I Love New York, Real Chance at Love and For the Love of Ray-J—worlds where Champagne and Jaguar are the names of contestants, not prizes.
Still, we need representation. After making gains in the ’80s and ’90s with series like The Cosby Show, A Different World and Living Single, diversity on television took a tumble. It’s no secret that TV—and Hollywood for that matter—has been whitewashed since pre-satellite days. In that tradition, the 2009 Emmy nominees of color only amounted to a handful, and one of them was animated (Samuel L. Jackson, for Afro-Samurai.) Cleveland Show got next?
Part of the reason for the lack of quality (read: scripted) programming is that unscripted television costs studios hundreds of thousands of dollars to create, far cheaper than the tens of millions to produce a scripted series. Mara Brock Akil’s struggles with The Game and Girlfriends reveal that even when a Black show is given a chance, it’s still subject to the whims of White executives.
Ultimately, the popularity of Black reality TV, despite the Barnum & Bailey antics, comes because no matter what’s happening, we’re still watching. For some, Real Housewives provides relatable characters. For others, it’s voyeurism with a side of schadenfreude: “Did you see how Sheree got evicted from her mansion?” Real Housewives of DC is up next, and Michael Vick has a BET reality show premiering in 2010. So maybe it’s time to turn up “Tardy for the Party” and just embrace the chaos. We know you know the words. —Latoya Peterson
Love It/Shove It For Bitch Magazine
Article: Oprah’s Body is Now Public Conversation – But What Are We Really Talking About?
Publication: Bitch Magazine
Date: Spring 2009
“I can’t believe I let this happen again!”
The headline screamed at me from across the bookstore. On the cover of her eponymous magazine, a sweats-clad 2009 Oprah Winfrey looked with dismay at a recreation of her trim 2005 body. The second line announced: “Oprah on her battle with weight – a must read for anyone who has ever fallen off the wagon.”
Inside, Oprah details her recent diagnosis of hypothyroidism, writing:
It seemed as if the struggle I’d had with weight my entire adult life was now officially over. I felt completely defeated. I thought, “I give up. I give up. Fat wins.” All these years I’d had only myself to blame for lack of willpower. Now I had an official, documented excuse. The thyroid diagnosis felt like some kind of prison sentence. I was so frustrated that I started eating whatever I wanted—and that’s never good.
The article garnered more than 350 comments on the O Website, with words like “evil,” “fat,” “carbs,” and “addiction” recurring frequently. The celebrity industrial complex seized on the story, with outlets like People treating the news with the same reverence as a congressional hearing, and blogs like PopWatch and Perez Hilton snarking their way to higher page views. And The fat-o-sphere added its voice as Kate Harding of Shapely Prose and Mo Pie of Big Fat Deal tried to nudge Oprah toward some semblance of body acceptance.
And yet, in the media cacophony of opinions and unsolicited advice, there was one topic that on which everyone seemed silent: the role that race—and perhaps more specifically, stereotypes about race and weight—play in the interpretation of Oprah’s battle with her body.
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“Where Did Our Angst Go? Teen Espirit Revisted
Written for Spin Magazine, August 2011
In the wake of Nevermind’s historic spew and cry, the world embraced the dark side, and then it didn’t. Will it ever again?
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” started as a joke, was misinterpreted as a revolutionary message, became recast as the ultimate alienated teen anthem, bloomed into a successful crossover hit, and ultimately caused no end of grief for the band that created it. In a sense, Nevermind’s most famous single is a Greek tragedy played out over 16 bars.
Fittingly, Nirvana’s ascent to pop stardom and enshrinement in rock history occurred at a specific moment, when America’s disaffected youth inherited a terrible economy, a trashed environment, and shattered fantasies of nuclear families. Appearing against this backdrop, Nevermind was an album crammed full of angst, inner struggle, and contempt for the society that had pushed America to the brink of collapse. As song after song from the album entered heavy rotation on the radio and MTV, Nirvana reached millions of people who saw themselves as outcasts, and who began to sense some sort of redemption in the bass line of “Come as You Are.”
Unfortunately, while Nevermind has endured as a musical achievement, the widespread disquiet that allowed the album to penetrate society so deeply appears to be over. Agitated, introspective, ambiguous lyrics flickered prominently in the pop mainstream, but were totally eclipsed by the end of the 1990s, when the relentlessly peppy sounds of boy bands and teen queens began to rule the charts. The idea of pondering the wider world in a pop song fell away as the Internet’s seductive pool encouraged young narcissists to drown in their own reflections. Bland smiles replaced wry smirks.
So what made skepticism, political awareness, and soul-searching so uncool? And what happened to the lost generation that related so intensely to Nirvana? In order to figure out why teenage angst “paid off well,” as Kurt Cobain put it post-Nevermind, but then virtually disappeared from pop culture for 20 years, we need to start further back.
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Moving Right Along…
Racialicious is keeping me busy, with installing ad networks and website stuff. Plus, my managing editor is down a computer and working overtime, so most of my energy has been spent trying to cover as much as we can on an extra limited time frame. ONA is also rolling right along – hopefully, you’ll see more of my work there next month. However, a few things have happened.
For one, my Ignite talk I gave on Hacking Diversity for SparkCamp is up!
And so is my article for Spin!
I posted about the overflow on Racialicious; hopefully the full text of the article will be online soon.
New presentations are up, most specifically my Video Games Prezo for NABJ.
At some point this month, I hope to have all of my presentations up here.
New Stuff!
Haven’t been keeping up with what I am writing (bad Toya!) but some things I’ve done recently:
At the Guardian: Oprah – an American icon
However, Oprah doesn’t quite get her due when she does, occasionally, veer into controversial territory. In the post-September 11 fervour, she bucked the national trend toward war and retribution, instead running thoughtful shows on Islam. To help combat xenophobia in the wake of global terrorism, she invited Queen Rania on the show to discuss her faith. And, most tellingly, Oprah ran a series of shows questioning the validity of war as a solution to global problems.
Staunchly in favour of peace, Oprah found herself going toe-to-toe with George W Bush and Colin Powell, who were making a case for war. Oprah, in a cordial offensive, aired clips of people in other nations asking that the US give peace a chance. Despite Oprah’s unwavering commitment to the education of girls across the globe, she declined an offer to join Condoleezza Rice’s public relations visit to Afghanistan. The official reason was that the show kept her too busy – but we all know that Oprah does what she wants, when she wants. The damning snub was a way of expressing her disapproval at trying to use the hallowed “Oprah effect” in the service of war.
The Root: Intellectual Property: Owning What’s Yours
Intellectual property is essentially intangible creations. Defined by the World Intellectual Property Organization, “Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce.” All of this law sounds like long, dry, boring legalese — that is, until we start dredging up the ghosts of black music past. Case in point: an iconic 1954 Time magazine cover portraying the face of jazz — Dave Brubeck, not Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis or Duke Ellington.
Just finished a monster piece for this magazine:
On this topic:
And next up is a smaller piece for this magazine:
New Year, New Work – Blogging, New Focus, The Root, NPR, The Guardian
So, it looks like this will be my new blog for personal updates, since I no longer feel like maintaining Racialicious and a whole other blog about my life.
The new year is off to a great start – tomorrow, I will talk a bit about my theme for this year: reinvention.
Already, new things are popping. Been working on the shiny new redesign of Racialicious, a new header for here, a new business model, and a new crop of special correspondents. But since 2010 went by in a blaze of work, I am also committing to having more fun this year, and taking more time to nourish myself. Changing out of my Eeyore pajamas more than once a week. Actually doing my nails and hair. Reading for pleasure. Slowly savoring a cup of tea. You know, things that go out of the window when you look at a pile of deadlines and a small window of time.
But no more! 2011 is going to be different.
In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been writing that isn’t on Racialicious.
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New Article: Ling and Lee Vigils Raise Larger Questions
Originally published at WireTap
Last night, over fifty people gathered at Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C. to hold a candlelight vigil for imprisoned journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. The two reporters for Current TV were in China filming a piece on sex trafficking when they inadvertently crossed the border into North Korea. They were detained by North Korean forces and have been awaiting trial for the last three months. The trial began today and there is still no word on the fate of the two journalists.
The D.C. event was one of six happening across the nation, with people from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Portland, and Birmingham all coming out to show their support. At the vigil, fellow Current Journalist Dan Beckmann shared his experiences working closely with Ling and Lee.
A letter of support written by recently freed Iranian-American journalist Roxanna Saberi was read, along with remarks from Lucie Morillon of Reporters without Borders. The group tracks freedom of the press around the globe, and runs a tally of journalists and media makers who have been abducted, killed, or imprisoned for their commitment to the truth. So far this year, 21 journalists have been killed, 143 were imprisoned (along with nine media assistants), and 70 cyber-dissidents (including bloggers) have been imprisoned.
Press Freedoms Under Attack
The purpose of a free press has been a major topic lately, with many newspapers and legacy media institutions running low on funding and slashing their coverage of local news and in-depth reporting. What Ling and Lee were doing with Current TV’s Vanguard program was an attempt to reverse that trend by creating accessible journalism that covered topics like the recession and the drug war in Mexico in a way that was understandable for a wide audience.
Ling and Lee’s work is invaluable to what I do as a media maker. As we enter a world where corporate interests often trump stories that impact every day people, Current TV’s work developing user generated content and training citizens to become journalists is rapidly emerging as a model to follow to keep citizens engaged in their communities.
But, it is like the old truism: Nothing in life comes for free. In the process of fighting for truth, we have to dig deeper and go to places we never thought we’d go, often at the risk of running afoul of authorities who would rather this information was not released. I read an article published in the Guardian newspaper a few weeks ago where the writer noted that with all the monitoring of digital sites and email addresses that investigative journalists would be wise to adopt the tactics of drug dealers to keep their sources safe.
While it seems ridiculous that reporters would need to buy prepaid phones by the pound and run messages via courier, we may be approaching a time where information will be worth as much as a kilo of cocaine and possessing this information will be just as dangerous as trying to run drugs. This is why Lee and Ling’s case matters so much. We all hope and pray for their return. However, their treatment and what happens to them will also serve as a much larger symbol of what we sacrifice for freedom of the press. All the information and news bytes we take for granted come with a cost attached. The question is simple: Are we prepared to pay this cost and keep fighting?
The Vigil Continues
Though lightning and thunder were picking up force overhead, most of the attendees stayed put until the end of the program, shielding their candles from the wind and sharing umbrellas as they listened to Pastor Eom Myong-Heui speak of her experiences as a refugee from North Korea. She spoke about the terrible events that occurred in her home country and led a prayer service for Lee and Ling to be returned home safely.
Dan Beckmann shared one last note he had received from Laura Ling on the day of their apprehension. He seemed desperate to convey one last connection, one last emotion, one last thought to the audience.
At that point, the skies opened up and most of the assembled group ran for shelter. Waiting for the rain to abate, we all checked email, sent Twitter updates, and set our clocks for 2 a.m. EDT — the time when the trial was set to begin.
After that, there was nothing we could do but wait.