Proud to be one of Forbes‘ “30 Under 30: The Next Generation of Media Moguls, Machers and Mavens.”

Finally put down some of my thoughts about growing up in the burbs, ending up in DC, and then discovering this whole other city in the same boundaries for the New York Times Opinionator section.

Washington, D.C., is a city of divides. There are racial divides, most notably a black D.C. and a white D.C. There are ethnic enclaves, with a Salvadoran D.C. sharing space with the Ethiopian D.C. There are the geographic boundaries that came to represent economic boundaries, like “east of the river” and “west of the park,” or the image divides between the tony Northwest section of the city and the formerly gritty Southeastern quadrant.

But to me, the most telling divide is a verbal one — does one live in D.C. or Washington?

Calling the city “Washington” reveals a certain experience. There are thousands of people who live and work in Washington — people with high-powered jobs, the transient class, the chattering class, the politicos, the folks who watch (or are guests on) “Meet the Press.” They rotate in and out of the White House or spend years bouncing through various continents before settling into an N.G.O. or nonprofit. Often, these are the people who refer to the city as a revolving door. Many have told me they’ve never met anyone “from here” before. (See aforementioned racial divide.)

Seemingly a world away are the lifelong residents, the multigenerational city dwellers, the folks who staff federal offices. This is D.C.: the city and surrounding suburbs are the site of the nation’s most visible and vocal black middle class. In D.C., people listen to go-go and jazz and look for long-term stability in a government job that will not change with administrations. This D.C. is where I grew up.

I loved, loved, loved ROFLCon. Met a bunch of great people, caught up with old friends, and got a great response on my breakdown of the “Shit People Say” memes.

Also got a bit of buzz. Here’s the write up from GigaOm:

Example: The “s**t black guys say” and “s**t black girls say” videos that exploded on YouTube (the latter logged more than 8.7 million views since December.) These videos, starring women in drag as the men and men in drag as the women, generated a raft of imitators including “”s**t white guys say about Asian women.” Another, ”s**t Spanish girls say” sparked a brouhaha over just which “Spanish” girls were being depicted. Dominicans? Puerto Ricans? Mexicans? It provoked a real discussion about ethnic identity.

Those videos are funny but also painful. “They’re about the f**ked up stuff other people say to you based on your identity,” Peterson said. In this way these memes are very serious. “Humor is a powerful tool … Some of these videos are so ridiculous you want to make jokes but they’re often about very dark moments” she said.

Also got a nod from The Atlantic:

Racialicious’s Latoya Peterson, who spoke on ROFLCon’s LOLitics panel, described the “shit people say” sensation as both “problematic and subversive.” Even though the meme trafficked in problematic stereotypes, it also allowed people to explore questions of identity and to offer, humorously, their own social commentary on what they saw. In this way, the participatory nature of the meme, and the Internet more broadly, gave space for people to have a voice in discussion of race and class and sexual orientation that weren’t possible when media was more centralized.

And a quick mention in MIT’s The Tech:

For example, on the “LOLitics” panel, Mozilla’s Dan Sinker described his experience running the @MayorEmanuel Twitter account, through which he told a distorted version of Rahm Emanuel’s campaign for Mayor of Chicago. Latoya Peterson, editor of the blog Racialicious, discussed the “Shit X Says” meme, its permutations, and how it can be subverted for activist ends, as seen in “Shit Cis People Say to Trans People” or “Shit Everybody Says to Rape Victims.” McGill University professor Biella Coleman discussed Anonymous and popular misrepresentations of the hacktivist organization, analyzing its interactions with the surveillance state.

And a few weeks back, I was also a guest on the Thom Hartmann Show:

“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.

Marie Claire is billed as “More Than a Pretty Face,” and has gained a reputation for being the fashion magazine for the thinking woman. In November of 2006, the magazine published “It’s Your Money, Honey” with the tagline “A special section on that slippery substance we love having but hate thinking about.”

The article opens with promise:

“We’re better educated, better read, and better at launching a business. So why, when it comes to managing money, do women lag behind?” Eagerly anticipating a gritty analysis of women and financial trends, I dove in to find ten pages of fluff. Accompanied by gorgeous photography, the text presents personal anecdotes, tidbits on the spending habits of celebrities, ways to “blow your dough,” a chart explaining what one hundred dollars is worth in various cities and quick snapshots of random women’s financial situations. Rounding out the article is a list of “20 Things to Get Before You’re 40.” The only useful advice is relegated to a small, ticker-like black box that threads across the article’s pages.

Contrast that with Maxim magazine’s “Make Your Money Multiply” feature, published in February of 2007. Maxim is not known for intelligent commentary. As one of the firmly entrenched lad mags, Maxim is described by my male friends as “the perfect toilet reading.” Bite-sized articles and fart humor are the defaults, and the article referenced above is illustrated with two dollar bills, folded origami style into rabbit shapes.

And the rabbits are humping. Of course.

Still, the four page article is packed with information with a true to form tagline: “Check into Maxim’s 12-step money-minting program and cure your chronic case of broke-ass.”

Visually appealing, the text is short and to the point. Blocking out chunks of lifetime, Maxim emphasizes the main goals in the title of each section. To illustrate, here is the six word summary of your post college life: “Early 20s: Drink Less, Save More.”

Maxim also lined up some venerable experts, condensing them down to paragraph sized chunks of financial wisdom. Suze Orman, Maria Bartiromo, Michael Corbett, David Bach, Dylan Ratigan, Larry Bennett, and Matthew Lesko all dish on savings, debt repayment, home purchasing, tax breaks, career mobility, dating, investing, stocks, pre-nuptial agreements, government money, and entrepreneurship. (To contrast, Marie Claire’s piece cites surveys, other magazines, and the chairman of Charter Financial Group, Inc.)

Celebrities are also profiled in this piece, but only to give financial advice. Check out this advice from rapper Ice T:

“Invest in pre-construction property. Usually you can double your money—coke is played out.”

The sidebars are also full of jarring statistics, explaining that the average renter is worth less than $5,000 while the average homeowner is worth more than $180,000. They also included stats on how much debt costs (dude, you just pissed away a flat screen!), the best of cheap knockoffs and purchase to commission ratios. All the advice is given in the typical Maxim style—but the information was so relevant to my life I have referred to the article multiple times in the last year.

Another study in differences can be seen by comparing “Cosmo’s Get-Rich-Quick Scheme,” which appeared in the October 2007 issue, and the January/February 2008 Men’s Health article “2008: The To-Do List: Part 2, Wealth.”

Both articles offer to grow your money, but it is quickly revealed that they have drastically different goals. The Men’s Health piece focuses on different ways to increase wealth through investing, saving, and increasing your earning potential. In the clearly titled section “5 Ways to Double Your Salary in Two Years,” Men’s Health readers are exhorted to negotiate aggressively in the workplace. Improving your visibility, becoming an asset, working your contacts and being informed about the pay scales for your position are stressed, as well as a topic that is almost never raised in women’s magazines— knowing when to quit. While men are being told to vacate their current position if they have not been promoted within a year, women are often instructed in the ways of trying to make the best of a hostile work environment.

The Cosmo article proves its financial advice is as shallow and vapid as its relationship advice continues by failing to mention any kind of link between increasing your paycheck and building wealth. Instead, the piece focuses on two major areas: smarter spending and saving. However, in Cosmo’s world, smarter spending really just means spending on the things the magazine deems worthwhile. Enthusing “You can rock designer duds!” the article encourages readers to embrace budget couture (save for one or two great pieces and fill your closets with cheapies), dress up their apartment with interesting accessories (more spending), and surf various websites for the best travel deals (you totally deserve an $800 trip to Dublin!) .

The page dedicated to saving money relies heavily on minor money moves. Citing the prevalent “latte factor”—the idea that daily expenditures for coffee drinks, snacks, and the like, add up fast—to explain many a lady’s lack of cash flow, the article asks women to analyze their expenses to reduce them and to pay bills on time to improve their credit. However, on the page dedicated to saving, there is also a large quote that reads “Sometimes a girl just has to splurge. You need a mad money fund to dip into for theater tickets or killer shoes.” In the end, this article about money management offers four out of nine tips that are about spending.

The Men’s Health article plays no such games with its readers. While the magazine does offer eight different ways to spend money, the tips are presented in the context of pleasing the woman you love. And right underneath that article, there are suggestions for six ways to invest your tax refund—designer gear not encouraged.

The most egregious difference between these two articles lies within its approaches to saving and retirement plans. The Cosmo piece is completely unrealistic in its aims—on one page, the editors urge their readers to tightly scrutinize their budgets; on the next, they recommend that young women invest a whopping $700 a month for the next 30 years to become a millionaire by age 50. Just one problem—if a woman is saving, spending on designer clothes, taking trips, and strapped for cash, where is she going to find $700 extra dollars a month? Even cutting out those daily Starbucks runs only grants you $120 in extra pocket change.

It is this feast-or-famine approach to money management that keeps women’s magazines lagging behind their male counterparts. There are two assumptions that are made and reinforced time and time again. Either women need baby steps (cut out your lattes, reexamine your budget) or they have money to burn and are able to put aside large amounts of cash. Interestingly, the Men’s Health piece also offers “Six Painless Ways to Build Wealth,” a piece that actually outlines a realistic approach to shoring up your savings. In addition to the basic advice (sneak money into a savings account; max out your 401K), the piece also advises spending money on a financial planner, reevaluating your tax load, and saving in $100 increments.

So why is it so difficult for women’s magazines to provide targeted advice that fits their readers lifestyles?

Stephanie Quilao of the blog Back in Skinny Jeans stumbles upon a key disconnect between the demographic information provided in magazine surveys and the topics those magazines actually publish. In a post titled “Now I get why every Cosmo mag helps us look hot to score that hottie1,” Quilao informs us that the average reader of Cosmopolitan magazine is “31 years old, college educated, and career oriented.” However, a quick glance at the magazine’s table of contents reveals that a scant one percent of coverage is dedicated to careers. (Relationships and fashion receive 29 percent and 21 percent editorial coverage, respectively.)

Quilao writes: “If the average reader is a career woman why is only 1 percent of the editorial spent on careers? And, in that careers section, I bet they lump in money. Every well-rounded woman I know wants to know how to make, keep, and grow her own money. How about this for a sexy Cosmo headline: “Men can’t keep their hands off a self-made woman.”

Don’t hold your breath for that particular cover head, though. Magazines like Cosmo and Marie Claire may not ever get the message that women are interested in their own financial futures. It could be because the writers and editors are drunk on the heady brew of stereotyping. After all, the idea that women are too emotional to deal with money or are disinterested is pervasive in our society. But those same writers and editors are career women themselves, and, likely as not, concerned with their own money. It’s also tempting to blame the lack of sound financial advice on just how beholden to advertisers women’s glossies are—if you tell women to spend money wisely, they might think twice about buying the $200 handbags touted in the ads. But men’s glossies and magazines targeted to women of color also depend on advertising, and still manage to print finance articles of substance, so while it’s always satisfying to blame advertising culture for the fluffication of our society, in this case we have to look elsewhere.

In the end, the lack of solid advice on money in these publications looks like sheer laziness, an unwillingness to venture beyond industry standards. And when economic times are hard, as they are now, it looks like something else, too: irresponsibility. As Maxim proved with its humping-bunnies article, sound financial coverage can fit into the overall attitude of a magazine—even if its audience is fart-joke-obsessed post-adolescents with short attention spans. So wake up Cosmo, Marie Claire, Glamour, and Vogue, and give us the advice we need so that we can earn, save, and grow enough money that we can have our handbags, donate to the Green Party, fund our IRA—and, yes, enjoy a nice cappucino without visions of dollar signs sliding down the drain.

Dollars But No Sense

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

Vibe Real Housewives Article

“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.

According to the Office of Minority Health (part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), nearly 80% of black women are categorized as overweight or obese, according to current health standards. The startling statistic has led magazines like Essence and Heart and Soul to emphasize and promote healthy eating and exercise, and has inspired media campaigns like Dr. Ian Smith’s 50 Million Pound Challenge.

But what else is at play in the size wars? Black women—women of color in general—are confronted daily with conflicting messages about the ideal body type. This conflict can manifest in strange ideas – for example, Debra Dickerson unleashed a firestorm on Salon.com in 2007 when she penned a story called “Healthy, My Ass” alleging that black women were “southern fry[ing themselves], complete with coveted ass, into Forest Lawn while your kids are still in elementary school.” Unfortunately, the article revolved around hip-hop model Buffie the Body, a woman of stacked proportions who would not fit the requirements for obesity. The comments section exploded, accusing Dickerson of everything from fat-hatred, racism, sexism, and being a self-hating black woman. Respondents to the article alternately praised and vilified Dickerson’s views – but the conversation stalled, as people approached the issue from too many different angles to understand the big picture.

Most mainstream media sources endlessly promote the idea that a woman should strive to be as thin as possible and should employ any means possible to maintain that size. Robyn McGee, author of Hungry for More: A Keeping-It-Real Guide for Black Women on Weight and Body Image, writes that in order to truly understand the struggles women of color face with weight and expectations, one must look at “consumerism, cultural constructs, marketing, and the pervasive power of media” that also contributes to how we view and perceive the ideal body. Guanabee.com editor Alex Alvarez recently took aim in a blog post at the concept of “thickness”—a different type of beauty ideal often found in Black, Latino, or South Asian communities wherein ample breasts, hips, and thighs are favored, but excess fat is not. This shifted cultural ideal creates a lot of confusion in feminist circles, as the relaxed standards of thinness seem to signal to some women that “thickness” is easier to attain. But as Alvarez notes, “More and more Anglo women are exposed to the idea that “thick” is a compliment and allows women to break free from the slim body associated with high fashion, high culture and exclusivity. In reality, this is merely trading one set of handcuffs for another.”

Oprah is currently battling the media assault surrounding her body by being proactive—drafting her audience into a “BestLife” campaign and engaging parents and teens in discussions about the underlying issues of weight gain and body image. However, a much more fruitful conversation would involve honestly dissecting the crossover between race—and its attendant implications about social class— accessibility to healthcare and affordable organic food, culture, and marketing.

But for some reason, I don’t think People Magazine would jump at that headline. —Latoya Peterson

Oprah Article for Bitch (.pdf)

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.

Pop music was an essential part of the social revolution that rocked America in the ’50s and ’60s, helping bring an end to segregation and fuel feminism’s second wave. Artists historically denied entry to America’s mainstream suddenly were cracking those boundaries. Musical crossover — via jazz, Motown, etc. — was its own form of integration. Then during the ’60s and ’70s, movements even further outside of the white American mainstream were thrust into the limelight.

In his remarkable 1988 movie Hairspray, filmmaker John Waters used protagonist Tracy Turnblad’s ’60s teen dance-show aspirations as a way to examine turbulent race relations. Based on events in Waters’ hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, Hairspray dramatized the controversy around the real-life Buddy Deane Show (renamed The Corny Collins Show), a major battleground for racial integration among Baltimore’s teens. In the film, Tracy and her friends win the fight, broadcasting images of black and white kids happily dancing together — in reality, the Buddy Deane Show went off the air rather than integrate.

Following this period, the ’70s came in on a wave of glitter, dancing, and polyester, as doors opened for Americans previously deemed unwelcome as loud-and-proud leaders of pop music. Disco exploded, with divas testifying about love and loss in songs that became anthems for gay men (many of whom were the creators of the music itself). Salsa also emerged in the ’70s, helping to introduce America to Latin culture. But some factions feared the changes represented by these movements, blaming various groups for contributing to the country’s economic and social disintegration. As a result, the culture swerved conservative, extolling so-called “family values,” a return to the idea of a homogenized nation, and above all, financial security. Punk and hip-hop were brewing, but their mainstream impact was a few years off.

Very quickly, the ’80s devolved from self-righteous puritanism to a drugs-and-money bacchanal, with Americans getting high on fleeting prosperity — until the bubble burst. Regular citizens were left holding the bag as the economy slid into recession, and we started to reevaluate where a culture based primarily on consumption would ultimately lead.

“Nevermind was really the voice of that generation who didn’t buy what [President Ronald] Reagan had tried to sell,” says Laina Dawes, author of the upcoming book What Are You Doing Here? Black Women in Metal, Hardcore and Punk. “They didn’t want to become their parents, who they felt had sold their souls for a rigid conformity that the youth could see was a bullshit existence.”

Jack Davey, of Los Angeles-based alternative R&B/rock duo J*Davey (who released a stirring version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” earlier this year), cites “a kind of newfound independence” that defined the late ’80s and ’90s. “People who were teenagers at that time were kind of rebelling against a lot of the economic oppression,” she says. “There were a lot of conventions in the ’80s that were worth rebelling against.”

While political affiliation largely determines how one perceives the public policies of the ’80s and ’90s, it is undeniable that Reagan’s trickle-down economic plan, mass deregulation of industry, cuts to education, food stamps, and environmental protection shook the nation. National poverty spiked, driven by corporate layoffs and lethargic hiring practices. According to the Census Bureau, from 1992 to 1993, the number of American citizens living in poverty rose from 14.8 to 15.1 percent, meaning that 39.3 million Americans lived in households eking by on less than $15,000 a year. The white-collar American dream, largely the foundation of our country’s mythology, looked increasingly out of reach.

Nirvana, photo by Michael Lavine

Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, recalls how this decline was often interpreted as a failure of Generation X (generally defined as those born from the mid-’60s through the ’70s). “There was literally a story in The Atlantic in the early ’90s with a white dude wearing his baseball cap backwards [on the cover],” Chang says. “It was about how this new generation is fucked in the head, downwardly mobile, and angry. At the same time, these movements that were underground were all about to blow.”

One other more major factor during the early ’90s pushed the culture toward a grimmer, rebellious view of the future — the Gulf War. Heavily televised images from Operation Desert Storm and speculation about reinstating the draft had a huge impact on kids coming of age at the time. “We knew the war was ridiculous, it was all BS, and there wasn’t anything you could do about it,” says Allison Wolfe, cofounder of riot grrrl band Bratmobile. “Then there was the whole draft thing, and all the guys I knew were freaking out.”

In the midst of all this national drama, teens and young adults latched on to ’90s pop culture as a life preserver — and it actually delivered its own salvation.

About the same time that Nirvana’s “Lithium” challenged ideas about the inner self and religion, another song crept into the mass consciousness — Radiohead’s “Creep,” a four-minute wail of anguish and longing that tapped into every kid’s hidden fear of alienation and became a pop crossover. However, in an interview with the Boston Globe in 1993, Thom Yorke revealed that the tune was actually about “being a man in the ’90s.”

“Any man with any sensitivity or conscience toward the opposite sex would have a problem,” says Yorke. “It is one of the things I’m always trying: to assert a sexual persona, and on the other hand, trying desperately to negate it.”

Meanwhile, feminism was being loudly maligned, a sentiment documented by Susan Faludi’s book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. As a result, more female artists began to overtly defend themselves, whether it was TLC boldly creepin’ for the affection they didn’t get from their cheatin’ boyfriends, Tori Amos raising her voice against being crucified (and whisper-singing the tale of her rape), or Salt-N-Pepa defiantly informing the world that their sex lives “ain’t none of your business!” As the ’90s went on, Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown took fuck-me feminism to a whole other level, Alanis Morissette told a former lover what he oughta know, Meredith Brooks celebrated her bitchitude (as a way to claim her humanity), and Lauryn Hill redefined black womanhood.

Frannie Kelley, editor of NPR’s The Record blog, recalls that despite the progress made by women, many still had to deal with negative stereotypes that men didn’t. This is illustrated in many ways by the public perceptions of Cobain and Hole lead singer Courtney Love, Cobain’s wife up until his death. “She was messy and angry and people hated her,” says Kelly. “He was messy and sad and people loved him.”Continue reading ‘Teen Esprit Revisited’ on page 2 >>

Cobain became not just the frontman for Nirvana, but a frontman for the whole ’90s debate about masculinity, femininity, and sexual identity that was going on across pop culture. In Nirvana’s heyday, he was known for wearing dresses, lipstick, and nail polish in an attempt to queer his own image and ridicule rock’s still-primitive views of male sexuality. In 1994, My So-Called Life introduced the world to Rickie Vasquez, a gay teen icon who wore eyeliner, labored under the weight of unrequited crushes, and sought to name his own identity. Watching Rickie kneel in snow stained with his own blood, beaten and homeless, during the holiday episode “So-Called Angels,” was a pivotal moment for many teens. While queer kids have been told for the past year that “it gets better,” Rickie Vasquez embodied that struggle — and the reality that a better life was just a few years off.

Even animation was grappling with larger questions of meaning and identity. In 1991, MTV debuted Liquid Television, an experimental showcase for vignettes on random topics. “Art School Girls of Doom,” for example, featured self-referential humor and two main female characters played by actors in drag. The show birthed two iconic ’90s series: Mike Judge’s so-asinine-it-was-awesome Beavis and Butt-Head and Peter Chung’s Æon Flux, a series of moody, brooding sci-fi cartoons that directly attacked ideas of duty to God or country. Æon also worked as a critique of the general narrative structure and deeply held conventions of Hollywood movies, which clearly delineated a hero and a villain, manipulating audiences to feel emotionally attached to a character based on societal cues. Chung positioned the heroic action scenes in Æon Flux as mostly foolish and accidental, placing characters in situations that existed far outside the boundaries of typical morality.

Nirvana, shot by Kirk Weddle

Chung’s belief in challenging the viewer was a ’90s ethos — pop culture for teens was smart. There was an assumption that audiences could handle an errant reference to, say, Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit — in fact, another MTV animated series, Daria, featured a misanthropic teenage girl as its lead character, and explicitly played on Sartre’s central ideas. But by the time the national economy seemed to rebound in 1998, pop culture had started to move away from the darker motifs of the ’90s voiced by Nevermind and Æon Flux. Instead, a new wave of imagery arose, based around boy bands and Britney Spears.

Spears couldn’t have been a greater contrast to the women who defined the 1990s. The unapologetically sexual, fierce sound of female braggadocio was everywhere, from MC Lyte and Queen Latifah to Liz Phair and PJ Harvey. Spears, held aloft as a symbol of purity and virginity, represented a shift away from everything those women stood for. Spears was soon joined by Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson (who also promoted her virginity), and Mandy Moore (who would later wince at her “Candy” years). With a sugary dance-pop sound, the teen superstars kicked angst to the curb, swapping reflection for a glossier 2000 edition of the teen dream.

Mediaite editor Alex Alvarez explains why the portrayal of cool in Nevermind and its accompanying videos — sardonic, anticorporate, defiant — was destined to be short-lived: “When Britney and the boy bands rose up, it was a return, or a continuation, really, of a teenage experience that was more aspirational — “I want to be like / I want to be with this person” — and, as such, more marketable. You can’t really make a buck off flannel shirts from the thrift store.”

Allison Wolfe sees larger forces at play. “People in power don’t like to feel like they are out of control,” she says. “In the early ’90s, there was so much energy, a kind of rebel spirit in all of these things. But mass culture has to control that, defang it, declaw it, and spit it back out as a product.”

Commercialism certainly played a role in removing discontent from the pop-culture mainstream, but another factor also emerged — the Internet. Suddenly, message boards, chat rooms, and Angelfire sites were having just as much, if not more, impact as concerts, zines, and TV shows. Young people could connect to others outside of their physical space, so all the black kids who felt like the only ones in their world with Nevermind on repeat — and all the white kids relating to Tupac’s and Biggie’s struggles from afar — suddenly had access to others in similar situations. The existence of a widely populated online world irrevocably transformed the way that we experience, understand, and ultimately create pop culture. Nevermind was decidedly pre-Internet.

Still, the album’s angst did eventually filter into cyberspace and the pop mainstream, but in a restyled mold — emo. With an army of pretty boys wearing guyliner and their hearts on their sleeves, emo took wide-ranging indignation and narrowed it down to lyrical navel-gazing. As Jessica Hopper wrote in the zine Punk Planet, emo put the focus completely on the individual, creating “songs and scenes populated with myopic worldviews that do not extend beyond their velvet-lined rebel trauma, their bodies, or their vans.” Alienation simply became a matter of fashion and lifestyle.

Or maybe the disaffection represented by Nevermind just simply died out because of cultural fatigue. After years of poverty and war, it was only logical for large segments of the nation to crave escape. Rap became shinier and flossier, with sparkly suits, bottles of Cristal, and gold-studded grills. Rock lost Billboard chart space to a teen-pop onslaught free of outcast stigma. By the late ’90s, MTV moved on to more disposable programming, from game shows (Singled Out, The Blame Game) to an increasing number of reality shows (Jackass, Road Rules), building off The Real World’s success. So, the culture fled from the darkness. Perhaps that’s part of evolving as a society. Mary J. Blige, whose career took off during the time of Nevermind’s boom, was known for her lyrical and public battles with addiction; then she symbolically killed off her former persona to move forward in her life.

Jeff Chang points out that abandoning a certain lifestyle doesn’t mean abandoning one’s core principles. “We [the generation that came of age in the '90s] are the motherfuckers who invented social media, we’re the motherfuckers all up in the Obama administration trying to make it cool,” he says. “People found an outlet for their rage that would be living — as opposed to Kurt ending up on the floor in his mansion.”

Perhaps angst isn’t dead, but rather, it’s simply being redefined. The rise of the digital realm, the ubiquitous nature of media in general (cable, satellite, video games), plus a more universal acknowledgment that any definition of American culture depends on one’s particular perspective, has resulted in an era when it’s not possible for cultural life preservers, like Nevermind, angsty or otherwise, to bob up and stay afloat in the sea of pop culture. Now there are just smaller islands in a much larger ocean. But this too will change.

Our current reality is the result of the turbulence of the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. With so many divergent forces swirling, it’s hard to even recognize historic shifts as they happen. Now that we’ve abandoned the idea of a unified culture for our own fast-forward fiefdoms, we may well be on a Titanic-style collision course with the next Nevermind. It might be another epic album or generation-defining movie. Or maybe it’s something that hasn’t even been invented yet, something beyond social media that will tie us all together.

And maybe, we’ll all be so preoccupied that we won’t even recognize it until after the moment has passed.

Spin Nevermind Article (.pdf)

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.

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: