magazine.
The Day I Made the Front Page of Reddit Plus
Vol. 5.1 Fall 2015
Hashtags Nintendo Craft Beer Women in Combat Umass Music Past Amber Rose: A Feminist? The Future of Independant Living
1964 The year ground was broken on the futuristic campus in Dartmouth designed by world-renowned architect Paul Rudolph. Since then the campus has grown to 9,500 students and developed a $26 million research enterprise.
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141,000
The number of public law schools in Massachusetts, and that one is at UMass Dartmouth, devoted to the practice of law for the public good.
Hours of community service performed by UMass Dartmouth students and faculty in a year.
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710
Interns engaged each year in learning and discovery at the UMass Dartmouth Advanced Technology and Manufacturing Center in Fall River, home to research laboratories and start-up companies.
Acres of land dedicated to the main UMass Dartmouth campus — 75 percent of which remains undeveloped woodlands and is being used as a “living classroom.”
1,161 Pounds of sulfur dioxide to be eliminated by campus wind turbine…and 489 pounds of nitrous oxide and 295 tons of carbon dioxide.
$90 million Private investment in property around the downtown New Bedford College of Visual and Performing Arts since the University’s art center was opened and began drawing student and faculty artists to the neighborhood.
$356 million The economic impact of the campus on the SouthCoast region.
2 The number of miles that the campus WIMAX wireless signal can reach, providing students with a level of connectivity that can be found at only one other University, and that is in Michigan.
90 Coastal inlets from Cape Cod to Narragansett Bay that the students and faculty of the School of Marine Science and Technology are working to save from pollution.
umassd.edu/admissions/
Contents Spring 2015
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Craft Beer Craze DIY Gifts for the Poor, Not so Crafty, College Student 10 Moving Day or Here to Stay? 12 The Future of Independant Living: An Answer to the fossil fuel issue that plagues the United States 15 Women in Combat: They’re already there: In recent years, one of the strongest debates has grown: should women be in the military? 18 The Mills of The Southeast: The Rise of a local Economy and culture 20 Uphill Slope 21 Nerds: Nerd culture is here to stay. 24 The Day I Made the Front Page of Readdit: How a mother and reddit user found herself on the “front page of of the Internet.” 27 Hastag: The evolution and growth of the Hashtag 30 Yoga: Being Flexible even when your schedule isn’t 31 Umass Music Past
34 The Evolution of Music Players 36 Nintendo: Surving the Console Wars: What use to be a playing card company has evolved into a timeless entertainment mastermind. 39 Metal Gear Solid: The Problem with Quiet 40 Racism in Pornography 42 Contraception 43 How to Choose a Bra 44 Amber Rose: A Feminist?: Could one of the most controversial celebrities be one of the strongest feminist? 48 5 Affordable Eye Shadow Palettes for Day to Night 49 Uber: What exactly is Uber and how does it work? 52 How to Survive a Night Out 56 LGBT in TV: The Slow Climb Up the Representation Ladder: How Bisexual and Transexuals are being represented on TV. 56 Why Does Everyone Hate Nickleback?
Spring 2015 Contributing Writers Tia Brown Dylan Fagundes Nate Goncalo Reisa Hines Alyssa Kudzma Ariana Leo Mary Mecedo Tim McDonald Amanda Ormseth Michael Perry Cassandra Raposo Marissa Sneed
Contributing Designers Olivia Bean Mathew Melo Megan Pereen Nik Surette
Supervising Faculty Dr. Anthony F. Arrigo Editor Nate Goncalo Art Director Megan Pereen
Dart Magazine Would Like to Thank the Following Underwriters The College of Arts and Sciences The Department of English The College of Visual and Performing Arts The Office of Undergraduate Admissions Graduate Studies and Research Development The Office of Public Affairs
UMass Dartmouth Department of English http://www.umassd.edu/cas/english/ Department of English UMass, Dartmouth LArts 341 285 Old Westport Road N. Dartmouth, MA 02747 Phone: 508-999-8274
Do you have questions, comments, article ideas, or letters to the editor? Feel free to let us know by emailing Professor Anthony Arrigo (aarrigo@umassd.edu)
Welcome to Dart Magazine...
Dear Dart reader, Dart Magazine is a unique academic opportunity for students at UMass Dartmouth. Here is the process of how the magazine is created. Each magazine edition is developed over the course of one semester in the context of a class on magazine writing and production. Teams of writers and designers work together crafting articles and designing layouts. After a semester-long process of many revisions, graphical iterations, deadlines, and long nights spent in the computer labs, Dart is ready to go to print thus completing a “real world� publication process. Although Dart is housed in the Department of English, it is truly an inter-departmental and inter-college endeavor that brings together undergraduate students from across the campus. Students majoring in disciplines as varied as English, Engineering, History, Psychology, Marketing, Graphic Design, and more have participated in creating the magazine. Dart is also a showcase of UMass Dartmouth creativity and collaboration as many of the photos and graphics, and all of the articles and layouts are contributed and developed by students from the university. We hope you enjoy reading Dart as much as we enjoy creating it. Kind Regards, Dr. Anthony F. Arrigo
UMass Dartmouth Department of English
Opportunities for Undergraduates Publications
• Corridors: the annual ejournal of Best Student Essays in the foundation courses http://www.umassd.edu/corridors • Dart: a semesterly culture magazine • Siren: a journal about gender issues • Temper: the annual literary review: poetry, fiction, drama, and creative nonfiction • The Torch: the student newspaper
Scholarships
• Adam Cohen Memorial Award: an annual $500 award recognizing academic excellence in literary studies for an upper-level student • Augustus Silva Award: an annual $3000 Scholarship for one English Major in each concentration
English Major Concentrations Writing , Rhetoric, and Communications This option develops’ competencies in effective communication. Students learn to assess and produce language for a range of rhetorical situations, analyze the discourse of others, and critically consider the ways in which language helps us to influence and order our world and our communities.
Literature and Criticism
This option focuses on reading and writing about a range of literary and cultural texts, and examining human experience in all its complexity. Through close reading and analysis of literary texts, students learn to articulate their own ideas and to engage the views of others, both in and outside the classroom.
A Major in English prepares you to: • Meet communication challenges in the workplace • Succeed in Law School • Succeed in Graduate School • Become a teacher • Become a journalist • Become a technical or freelance writer
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umassd.edu/professionalwriting | facebook.com/professionalwriting
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T F A R C ER BE th rmse nda O a tte e m r By A ik Su By N t u o Lay
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ccording to Stan Hieronymus at Craftbeer. com, there were 4131 American breweries in 1873. Prohibition, which started in 1920 decimated the beer-making industry, but upon its repeal in 1933 the number quickly jumped back to over 700. From there, it was a long, slow decline until the early 1980s when only about 50 independent beer companies were left, and most of the beers produced were pale, bland, and pretty much all tasted the same. Contrast that with today when, according to the industry trade group for craft brewers, Brewers Association, American craft brews boasting of complexity, uniqueness, variety and not to mention flavor, now produce about one out of every 10 beers sold in the United States. But what exactly is craft beer? Craft beer is typically better quality, higher in alcohol, and has many more choices than the three big brands in American beer: Budweiser, Miller, Coors. It focuses on small-batch, local brewing in independent breweries. Brewers Association defines craft brewers as producing less than 6 million barrels of beer a year and less than 25% of the brewery is owned by non-craft brewers. Instead of supplementary ingredients like rice and corn, over half of craft beer volume comes from all malt beer which means they use better quality ingredients. Beer has four basic ingredients: barley, hops, yeast and water. These ingredients can be used in different combinations or quantities to get different styles of beer, and depending on the season, ingredients can be added to affect the flavor and color. For example, “summer beers” are lighter and more citrusy while “winter beers” are darker and spicier. Craft breweries are known to take their time to focus on the actual beer production rather than marketing. According to consumer research group Mintel, the average alcohol content of craft beer is 5.9 percent ABV (alcohol by volume). Craft beers can range anywhere from 6-20% while beers like Bud Light have an ABV around only 4%. This means to feel any effect, you have to drink more beer and ultimately spend more money. The world’s largest brewer, Anheuser-Busch, has recently been accused of watering down their beers in order to up their profits. With more than 60 breweries around Massachusetts, the Codfish State has become home to some of the finest craft beer. One of the closest, Buzzards Bay Brewing, is located on Horseneck Road in Westport, MA. Like most breweries, they offer various beer selections and give tours to understand more about the production and consumption of their beer. While drinking craft beer can be its own hobby, part of the fun is trying different kinds from different breweries and regions; it can be made into an adventure by visiting a local brewery. However, craft beer has become so in-demand you can find it in almost any bar or restaurant and liquor stores have devoted entire sections to ‘craft’ beer selections. The special thing about craft brewers is that they pride themselves in making beer their own unique way.
DIY GIFTS FOR THE POOR, NOT CRAFTY
T N E D U T S CO LLEGE
Whether it’s a birthday, an anniversary, or any holiday, there is always the issue of money, especially as a college student. There are rarely times in college that you are not running low on cash. When it comes to the holidays it’s always hard to find a decent present within your budget. So here are a few gift ideas for any occasion, for family or friends, that are cheap, not too artsy, and not at all time consuming.
By Mary Macedo Layout by Olivia Bean
A simple gift that will get the best reaction is the Cake of Beverages. The name sounds ridiculous (because I just made it up), but the gift is cheap and easy to assemble. All you need is a case of beer, or a case of any beverage that the recipient would love. You will also need 3 cardboard circles, ribbon, tape, and a bow if you’re feeling extra fancy. If you want a big cake I would suggest you get more than one case of the beverage. You can buy a cardboard poster board or even use a box to cut three circles out making one big, medium, and small. Take the large one and tape the cans on, then take the medium circle and tape that on the top of those cans. Then proceed to tape the cans on to that layer. Do that until you reach the top. Then wrap ribbons around each layer and tape for security. Tada! Now you got yourself a Cake of Beverages! If you want a really nice sentimental gift, there is always pictures, depending on how crafty you want to get there are plenty of options with pictures. If you’re not feeling particularly crafty you can go to Kohls, which has thousands of cheap frames to make a collage or a singular photo. If you want something more
CANDY BAR CANDY
BAR
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unique you can try the wooden photo transfer. All you need is a light-colored piece of wood, whether it’s scrap or from Home Depot, mod podge, a brush, a picture, and towel. Put a thin layer of mode podge on the wood, place the picture face down on the wood, smoothing it out, making sure there are no air bubbles. Let it sit for 18 hours. Then use a wet towel to gently rub the surface until the paper rubs off and you have a beautiful picture. Another very cheap and easy idea is painting on glasses. You can go to your local dollar store and buy any type of glass cup you want and hand paint words or pictures on it to give your gift that personal element. All you need is a glass, a brush, and folkart acrylic paint and you have got yourself a thoughtful personalized present. Last but not least there is always the option of food as a present, as long as you know exactly what they like. You can make them a “Candygram”. All you need is candy, a poster board, a marker, tape and some kind words. Another food gift is the “Broquet”. All you need is their favorite foods, tape, tissue paper, and a vase, big mug, or small box to hold everything.
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Moving Day or here to Stay? By Mary Macedo Layout by Mathew Melo
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raduation comes faster than one might think. Before you know it, it is senior year, you are working your hardest to do all of your end of degree projects, but the thoughts of what will happen after graduation are looming in the back of your mind. Will you find a job? Will it pay well? And the biggest worry… will you be able to move out to your own apartment or will you be living with your parents? Whether you commute or have lived on campus, the goal when you graduate is to get a job and move out on your own, but affordable rent, your student loans, and finding a well paying job are all factors thrown against you in your battle to become an official adult. “I just graduated in May of 2015 and I am living at home with my parents,” said 23 year-old Susan Grenier. “I didn’t get a job until almost August, so it was pretty hard to try and move out,” she said frowning. “I have money, but not enough to pay rent every month.” Rent can be extremely expensive depending on where you are looking to buy and most recent graduates would rather split the cost with roommates. “Immediately after graduating this past May, I went straight into grad school and luckily found a job, but I needed a place to live,” said 22 year-old Lexie Theodore. “Three of my close friends from school were also looking for a place, so we all now live together in a small 4 bedroom apartment in Springfield, MA,” she said. “Even with the four of us splitting rent, it is still $600 a person each month, which honestly doesn’t leave me with much money left to spend, but it was the best we could find.” It is the struggle between money and independence. Rent is expensive and if you can’t
find roommates, it is pretty much impossible for a first year graduate to move out on their own. Rents will vary depending on the city you want to live in or how nice of a neighborhood it is. “Me and my roommates looked for places closer to our work/school, but the closer we got, the more the rent seemed to be,” Theodore said. “The rent for places in Dartmouth is much more expensive than in New Bedford,” Grenier said. “The only cheap rent is in the really bad parts of New Bedford, in which case I would rather sacrifice my independence and just live with my parents,” she said laughing. The looming debt of student loans and the always rising cost of rent is causing a lot of students to stay in their childhood bedrooms and give up that college life independence that they felt for the past four years. “I felt so independent at school, no one wondered where I was or what was doing,” Grenier said. “I had no one to answer to, but now my parents know my every move and it is weird going from being totally off on my own at school, to coming home to my parents every night, it feels backwards.” It is the struggle most graduating students feel the first year out of college. You want to live on your own and be independent because that is what you are used to do, but you need time to get a job, and where want to live before you jump into a pool of rent debt. “Being able to be on your own and pay for your own expenses your first year out of college is liberating,” Theodore said. “But don’t rush it, figure out what you need, and what you want because you have your whole life to pay bills and be a real adult, take your time.”
So when you decide it’s the right time to move out, look at your options. Sure you can get an entire house to youreself in Nebraska for the same price as a grungy one bedroom in New York, but it all depends on the career you want and the atmosphere you like. Prices may vary but the life you want to live doesn’t. 10
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LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - If you don’t want that party life to stop after college you could always move to the city that never sleeps. Las Vegas. For 1000 dollars a month you can live at the Sedona Ridge Apartment Homes with three bedrooms and two bathrooms at 1175 square feet, with spacious rooms and access to community pools, hot tubs, game rooms, and grills. SIMILAR: Los Angeles, Beverly Hills
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA - If you’re not into the city life, Nebraska has what you want for a great price. You can get a place for 1000 dollars a month with four bedrooms and two baths at 1700 square feet with a double car garage. It is a very spacious place with carpeted floors and a finished basement. SIMILAR: Nashville,
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS - If you still want that city life you could always try Boston. You can get an apartment for 1000 dollars a month with one large bedroom, one small bathroom, and a tiny kitchen, with hardwood floors. SIMILAR: Providence, Chicago
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK - If you’re looking to live the city life, I hope you like small enclosed places. NYC has no apartments under 2700 dollars. The best there is a tiny one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn with an old fashioned looking bathroom with poorly done tile floors for 1000 dollars a month. SIMILAR: Chicago
MIAMI, FLORIDA - If you want a warmer climate when move out, Florida is a nice place to go. For 1000 dollars a month you can get a small one bedroom apartment, with a bathroom that looks pretty used and tile floors that could use an update. SIMILAR: Hawaii
There is a current global need for clean and renewable energy sources. Fossil fuels are nonrenewable and are dwindling because of the growing cost and environmentally damaging retrieval techniques. So, the need for cheap and obtainable resources is greatly needed. An efficient and more feasible alternative option is solar energy.
f o e G r N u I t V u I f L
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any people probably wonder: if renewable energy is so beneficial, why don’t we consume more of it? The answer to the question is that many of the renewable energy sources are more expensive to retrieve because they don’t receive subsidies on the level of fossil fuels. Combine that with the problem of storing wind, solar, and water-generated energy and fossil fuels still provide the bulk of our energy production. Although there has been an increased effort to promote renewable energy, a 2015 study by the US Energy Information Administration shows that utility-scale solar power, for example, produced only 0.16 percent of the total electricuty in the United States. In recent years individuals have also seen the benefits of getting solar panels by utilizing private companies to install them, and they do cut energy costs, but cannot alone make a house completely energy independent. Can home battery storage be a solution to issues faced by the intermittent output of home solar and wind technology? In the short term, it probably can, but as the penetration of renewables starts to grow in major economies, many think that battery storage at such scale will either simply be too expensive or not have enough capacity to solve some of the long-term issues. Kaitlyn Arruda and Jaci Ahmed are two engineering students in their sophomore year at MIT. The two best friends, with a little help from free MIT service technical blogs, have
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successfully adapted an entire 5 acre farm to be completely powered by renewable energy. Kaitlyn, an electrical engineer, has aspired to off-grid living since she was a young farm girl living in the agricultural district of Sacramento, CA. Her passion for sustainable living grew through her teen years when she stumbled upon the works of Jacque Fresco’s resource-based economy and Venus city through National Geographic. On her 15th birthday her parents got her tickets to hear Jacque Fresco speak in Stockholm about natural-resource management and cybernetic technology automation. Her freshman year, Kaitlyn took up electrical engineering with a conentration in agriculture engineering. She excelled in her first year and received high honors and a prestigious internship at the Tesla facility in Silicon Valley the summer going into her sophomore year. There, Kaitlyn worked alongside Robert Kilstein (one of Tesla’s co-founders and battery developers) to test newly created batteries considered four times more efficient, less costly, and smaller than lithium batteries used for industrial energy storage. Kaitlyn got the chance to live her dream of being at the hub of the near renewable future. She witnessed Tesla prototype electric sports cars, mag rail concept designs, and even breakthrough nano carbon computer processors that will allow major leaps in computation power without the need of conflict minerals. But as soon as Kaitlyn witnessed the Tesla batteries, that was all she could think about.
The very same day Kaitlyn took a tour through the facility, she asked Robert Kilstein if it was possible to store enough energy to power a house with a Tesla battery. Kilstein replied “no.” Kaitlyn was crushed and kept laughing out of embarrassment to even ask such a question to such a person. But then Kilstein followed up his answer, “Depending on the house and the renewable energy source, it will most likely take 3... Mine takes 4, but it’s very big.” Kaitlyn had just received the green light to turn her life long dream into reality. “Testing the battery’s capabilities kept initiating more and more confidence in the process of retrofitting a home to be completely renewable without immense cost or the lack of power stored in conventional batteries,” said Kaitlyn in an interview with the Boston Globe this year. “In this age it’s inexcusable to still rely on fossil fuels and coal... when technology has allowed us to gather significant amounts of energy off of the sun, wind, and water.” But Kaitlyn pointed out that these modes of energy had existed for nearly a hundred years (coal and fuel lobbying congressional ordinance aside). The issue now is how to make homes self sustaining through a cost effective and efficient way to store the energy, or to pool energy into a massive grid that an entire renewable energy powered neighborhood could share. Kaitlyn found out that retrofitting enough of the batteries together could allow a 3000 square-foot home to be taken off the grid and have enough excess energy to power more. Retrofitting enough Tesla batteries could store so much energy that it could be either applied to the grid to receive 2 times the amount of money in rebates while maintaining 100% of home energy necessities, or to allow enough surplus power to manage renewable tech to create a VENUS home modeled after her hero, Jacque Fresco. A Venus home is a small scaled design version of a VENUS city created by the famed engineer Jacque Fresco , personal hero to both Kaitlyn and Jaci, which produces its own energy and utilizes that energy for water filtration, irrigating and powering climate controlled greenhouses. A Venus home wouldn’t just eliminate the need of the electric grid, but could also decrease the need of public water
mains with owner powered filtration systems and, to some extent, grocery stores with the ability have excess power to run climate controlled greenhouse. At the end of the summer internship, Kaitlyn arrived back to her 3000 square foot rural colonial farmhouse with 2 climate controlled greenhouses, 2 acres of farmland, 3 water wells, and a chicken coop. Her plan was to retrofit her farm to store
About 4% of Electricity in the US comes from wind
Roughly 66% of electricity in the US comes from coal and natural gas enough power to be fully off the grid and have the house work for her family. The home already had solar panels and balloon windmills that Kaitlyn’s family received for free by utilizing federal subsidies and paying the solar installers in partial rebates. But it only cut their home energy bill by 50%, and that’s if the sporadic New England weather was somehow consistent that month. Plus since they didn’t have batteries, they couldn’t store energy for nighttime use nor could they save enough energy to run their irrigation, climate controlled greenhouses and chicken coop . This was all about to change. Once Kaitlyn returned home she immediately purchased 4 tesla batteries by utilizing farmland
Less than 1% of electricity in the US comes from solar sources
About 19% of electricity in the US comes from nuclear power Dart Magazine
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grant money and some money from her savings. “When they arrived in the mail, it felt so amazing. I had learned everything there is to know about them in California and from Kilstein...and now I was going to take all these hypotheticals, tests, and calculation and make them a reality” said Kaitlyn. Her entire home , food production, and farmland was going to be cut off from the municipal grid. But she needed help to properly connect all of these things to a centralized retrofitted capacitor that connected the batteries to the solar panels and windmills safely. That’s when she called upon the talents from her fellow MIT classmate, best friend, and mechanical engineering student, Jaci Ahmed. Jaci’s family came from a long line of farmers in India up until his parents cut that line and became agricultural engineers to help the country solve its failing farming production and become greener and more efficient. “Doing something like this is in my blood... It is in my blood to help Kaitlyn do this,” said Jaci with a huge smile while slapping a large humming stack of Tesla batteries mounted to a concrete panel that he built. “I hope to one day make this better and even easier for every home to be able to do this... I want to help the world and people.” Jaci’s aspirations to make the world greener and more efficient started with another project to retrofit Tesla batteries to supplement his best friend’s home so it could finally become completely and efficiently powered off of green energy. Within 3 weeks of building, wiring, and testing, Kaitlyn’s house, farm, and entire way of living was supplemented by free renewable energy. Kaitlyn’s family received fruits and vegetables from their climate-controlled greenhouse, chicken eggs from their climate-controlled silo, while all of their lights and heating and cooling needs were met without a single wattage siphoned from the grid. All of the irrigation and drinking water came from their wells, while over 60 percent of their food came from their farmland. Katlyn’s family was no longer beholden to American energy production, agriculture production, or municipal water supplies. All because of two college sophomores with an obsession of efficient and complete green living.For the rest of us how might feel like this is beyond our reach, there is some good news. There are thousands of youtube videos by professional engineers and how-to blogs created by prominent engineering schools that supply directions on everything from how
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to instal batteries and solar panels to hooking up to the electrical grid. There are videos and MIT blogs that also have directions on how to retrofit batteries of all types and models to create a viable storage cells. As for the cost, the Tesla solar batteries are expensive–about $3500 per battery–since they are still a fairly new technology. Even with Kaitlyn exhausting grant money given by renewable and farming government subsidies, she still ended up paying about $1500 out of pocket for the batteries to power her home. But the technology, like anything, will become more efficient and more available over time. In terms of cost-effective renewable energy to power the house without energy storage, depending on what company installs solar panels or balloon wind turbines, and what a state’s policy is for subsidizing renewable energy and rebate payment deferrals, it is possible a person won’t need to spend a dime for solar panels and turbine installations. Even without batteries of any kind, those energy supplement will cut your daytime energy consumption significantly. But the issue still stands with the more effective technology available in society today, “partial” cuts in energy consumption is unavailing. With Tesla batteries,and even better energy production and storage technologies in the future that tesla plans to build up in the future as the demand is high, the word “partial” in renewable energy subsidiary will be ,and in many cases already is, obsolete. It would be advantageous for everyone if all the world powers would combine their efforts to get the ball of complete renewable energy rolling quicker to save the environment, end resource wars, and prepare for the imminent end of cheap oil. Or at least for major world powers to provide the means and support to get more youngster to be inspired like Kaitlyn and Jaci about helping the world wean itself off of its crude energy usage and maintain its living standards without any carbon karma that used to come with it. There is hope yet, and two sophomores from MIT utilizing their own funds and an open source engineering blog and a love for Jacque Fresco are living proof. d
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Deniers like Anna Simons, Professor of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, say things like, “how much time do command staffs already spend on boy-girl troubles? Anecdotally, fraternization and related issues eat up way too much time” and “Being overly academic and insufficiently adult about adult behavior isn’t just irresponsible but imperiling, and belies the deadly seriousness with which we should want combat units to perform.” The thing that most people like Anna Simons don’t understand is, females are already in combat, and have proven to succeed time and time again. For example, Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester who received the Silver Star for her actions on March 20th 2005 during an enemy ambush on a supply convoy near the town of Salman Pak, Iraq. Or Major Ann Dunscombe who commanded a military police company in Jalalabad, Afghanistan from 2005-2006 or Hospital Corpsman Shannon Crowley who served in the Female Engagement Team with the 1st Battalion 8th Marines in Afghanistan in 2010. These are just a few marks on the long list of female soldiers who are already serving and have already served in war zones and have shown that they are suited for the most intense wartime conditions. Major Gregory Trahan told TIME magazine in a 2013 interview about a female soldier who showed just how capable she could be during when her squad needed her most. Her convoy had just driven through seven mortar rounds that exploded one right after another, the gunner of her Humvee had taken shrapnel to his body armor and had the wind knocked out of him, “My supply sergeant radioed back to
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me and said that the SAW [squad automatic weapon] gunner in her truck, who had been hit but who was not bleeding or anything, was nonetheless afraid to get back on the gun. I told her to get somebody back up there. So, this young female sergeant – probably 23 or 24 years old – put him in her seat and then she got up and began pulling security with the vehicle. I thought that was pretty awesome.” This is just one story from the many that came from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Even though most females served as drivers and medical providers, they were still being exposed to combat and showed that they were capable to be there. In Afghanistan we saw the deployment of “cultural support teams”, the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment started to send women out into some of the Afghan provinces to better connect and reach the women of Afghanistan who had been previously inaccessible for their male counterparts. These female soldiers like Lt. Ashley White, about whom the book “Ashley’s War” was written, were being deployed directly into the raids that Army’s special forces Ranger unit had been conducting. Their jobs ranged from helping their male squad mates search through the house to find weapons and information, or even calming down the Afghan women during raids, which previously the male rangers had a hard time doing. The Army started to notice rapidly that there was a whole new community becoming accessible to them through the integration of women to the battlefield. These stories show us just how effective and important females can be to our armed forces, not only have they proven themselves capable in combat situations but they have broken through to a community that was previously unreachable for our men in the military. So what’s the problem? Why are there still so many stereotypes about women in combat, and their ability to perform the tasks their male counterparts do every day? On August 20th, 2015 at Fort Benning 2nd Lt. Zachary Hagner spoke to the media about how he was skeptical about his female classmates; Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver, who were the first two females to make it through Army Ranger School. "I was ignorant and assumed that because they were women, it was going to be harder for them," said 2nd Lt. Zachary Hagner. But during the last day of the mountain phase, as Hagner had already been carrying his 20Lb SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) for three days, Hagner turned to his squadmates to ask for some help. "Everyone said 'no’ but [Griest] took it from me. She, just as broken and tired, took it from me, almost with excitement. I thought she was crazy for that, but I guess she was just motivated." There was a similar situation with 1st Lt. Hayer, 2nd Lt. Michael Janowski said, "I probably wouldn't be sitting here right now if not for Shaye," because Shaye had also been the only one to volunteer to help with extra weight. In July of 2015, Pentagon officials unveiled a plan to open all combat roles to the 200,000 women already serving in the armed forces by 2016. "I remain confident that we will retain the trust and confidence of the American people by opening positions to women, while ensuring that all members entering these newly opened positions can meet the standards required to maintain our warfighting capability,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said. Each member of the armed forces including the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Special Forces commanders have detailed steps they will take in order to accompany the new orders, but not all of them showed the same level of comfort with the Pentagon’s decision. Numerous officials still have doubts about the physical requirements that have to be met in order for females to serve, like the grueling task of repeatedly lifting a 55 pound tank round over your head that all Marine infantry units are required to be able to do. But officials have shown the willingness to work together to address these doubts and questions, as Juliet Beyler the director of officer and enlisted personnel management said, “There is an understanding that doing this right takes a period of time.” d Dart Magazine
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There are over 70 mills in the city of Fall River and 18 mills in New Bedford, and that’s not even including the mills that have been demolished or burned down in the past. These mills have helped provide a unique asset to Southeastern Massachusetts since the mid to late 1800s. Fall River was actually the textile capital of America in the 1860s, surpassing Lowell, MA, with over 500,000 spindles running in the mills. New Bedford would later take that distinction in the early 1900s. Many of the mills that still stand in the two cities have been refurbished and repurposed for local entrepreneurs and artists. Both cities have used the mills to their advantage, using them for economic development or spaces of culture. The mills provide the square footage that many larger businesses require without having to build their own structure. According to Charette, working in the mill space provides him with many advantages, including the opportunity to feed what he liked to call his “creative chaos.” First, was obviously having the space he needed to work. Not only could he work, but he could work with different mediums; he didn’t have to sit at a desk and draw, he could stand up and splash paint on a canvas bigger than him. It opened up his creativity. Secondly, it allowed him to hold his own art shows within his studio. He didn’t have to rely on finding a place to show his art at a show or gallery like with The Narrows in Fall River. The space was more informal than a regular studio/gallery. People like myself visited his gallery whenever to talk art and possibly purchase something. Thirdly, he thought that the community was one the best features of the mill. He could walk down the hall and be greeted by other artists and artisans working just as hard as him. In his mill alone there was a tattoo artist, coppersmith, sculptor, and a graffiti artist that he could to. “I could walk outside to the bus stop and there would be artists talking. There was always somebody to talk to about art.” Charette had attended the Swain School of Design that was originally located in New Bedford, but was eventually absorbed into UMASS Dartmouth’s Center of Visual and Performing Arts. Many people from the school and others from his career advised him to move to places like New York to “make it big”, but he never felt the need. “I can pay a bunch of money to have no space and a crappy apartment, or stay here and have all the space I need for less cost? Art is still art wherever you go, does it really matter where I am?” Charette just recently moved back to his hometown, Fall River, after problems with money and the actual building itself. He’s currently working in an apartment with his wife in a room much smaller than the one he had in the mill. Fall River and its residents have made their own efforts to promote the arts in the mill buildings. The Narrows Center for the Arts has become the hub for most of the art in the city. It’s a well known non-profit organization that serves as a local venue for
By Nate Goncalo Layout by Nik Surette
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Photo by Garrey on Flickr
original music acts, an art gallery, and an artisan space. They host an arts festival and block parties with live music and local arts and crafts every year. Some different collaborative art groups have made their homes in the mills outside of The Narrows, like the MillBillies that run their own studio that produces art shows frequently. He expressed to me that working in Fall River just wasn’t the same as New Bedford. To him New Bedford had a different atmosphere, where the arts were heavily promoted and encouraged. Artist communities thrived in the mills of New Bedford, but he couldn’t find one such place like that in Fall River. All the art he did find was overly cliquey, lacked cooperation, and had a poor attitude. “The best part about being in New Bedford in the mills was the community that you had. I can’t find that here in Fall River.” He expressed how the events that supported the arts community outshined Fall River’s attempts, more specifically the AHA! Nights that have been a staple in New Bedford since July 1999. AHA! (Art, History, Architecture) Nights are free cultural events that are open to the public to promote the local art and culture scene. They include open galleries, music performances, talks, and other events. Fall River very recently has attempted to create their own AHA! Nights that haven’t seen the same turnouts as New Bedford. Fall River’s roots were never in the arts. Fall River has always been based in production and industry. Many textile and clothing based businesses are thriving in Fall
River’s mills. The Merrow Sewing Machine Company, the oldest manufacturer of sewing machines still operating in the United States, moved to Fall River in 2004. They have a stitch that is unique only to their machines. They sell their machines all over the world in over 60 countries. In recent news, Brooklyn clothing entrepreneurs came to Fall River in search of the Merrow stitch. They ended up making a special shirt in conjunction with Merrow and also another Fall River mill-based company, the New England Shirt Co. The N.E. Shirt Co. has been operating since 1933 creating premium, handmade shirts. They have different clothing collections for the Fall and Spring seasons that are featured in high-end clothing stores like Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s. Almost in the same vein, Project Repat has found a home in the same mill building where Precision Sportswear, another Fall River based clothing company, is located on Front Street. Project Repat takes your old, prized t-shirts and turns them into a quilt lined with Polartec fleece. Precision Sportswear works with customers to create any type of custom garment or accessory in small or large productions runs. The mills haven’t only been used for apartments or textiles, many other types of businesses have found their way into the mills. Many have turned into medical buildings, office spaces, gyms, markets, dance studios, etc. Another great use of the mills that’s become popular in both Fall River and New Bedford is living spaces. One of the most recent additions to Fall River is The Curtain Lofts. The Quequechan street mills were refurbished into high quality living spaces. The Whitman mills in New Bedford were also turned into loft styled apartments to create The Riverbank Lofts. Developers were able to use the mills’ large hardwood floors and brick walls to their advantage because prospective buyers are always looking for older, rustic looking spaces with a modern flare. Each city has its own qualities, strengths, and weaknesses. New Bedford will no doubt remain the leader of the arts in the area, while Fall River will continue to perpetuate its strong commercial history. Overall, the mills have helped to provide unique opportunities to each city’s local commercial and arts economy. They provide the space that people require to work to their fullest potential without having high rent rates or costly buildings to construct. The space is there, it’s just a matter of utilizing it to create something great. Even outside of Fall River, musicians and bands are taking advantage of this area’s industrial past and making their own communities in mills and warehouses in places like Providence and Pawtucket. I myself have experienced a mill where each door had a band rehearsing for their next gig behind it. The mills have not only helped to create a local economy, but also helped to create a community of people with common interests. Many of the mills still haven’t been touched and hundreds of square footage are still up for grabs. The next best thing might be coming to a mill near you soon...
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By Mary Macedo Layout by Olivia Bean
Uphill Slope “...it is a great time whether you have just started learning or you’ve been going for years.” Winter is coming (no, not the Game of Thrones kind… actual winter) and the UMass Dartmouth Ski and Snowboard Club have a new and improved group of student officers pumped and excited for a new year of shredding the slopes. Whether you’re a beginner or more advanced, each mountain has a lot to offer for a good price and is a great opportunity to make new friends or hang out with old friends who have the same passion as you. “Any level of skier or rider is welcome because not only does the mountain provide lessons, but we are always willing to help out new riders who are just starting out,” said the vice president, Brandon. The club is always looking for new members. They have been promoting themselves throughout the campus by having information meetings, raising money to buy sweatshirts for the club, and even having a table at UMass’s Fall Family Fun Festival. “This year we will be in the campus center tabling as much as possible and trying to get new members to go on trips with us,” said Medeiros. “At our table we do raffles for gift cards and lift tickets, anything to help promote our club and get more people involved.” The club has filled UMass hallways with flyers this year promoting the club, which is fairly unknown to most students. “A lot of kids at this school ski or snowboard and go on trips with their friends or by themselves and don’t realize it would be cheaper for them if they went with our club,” said the treasurer Russell Sousa.” The club has also been working to overcome a lot of leadership turnover, and the frequent change of officers in the past few years has made it hard for the club to go on as many ski trips as they would have liked. “Every year the club gets new officers because usually the officers graduate,” said club president, Michaela Norman. “The transitioning of presidents is always tough at first, but Ben (last year’s president)
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helped me understand my tasks as the new president,” Norman said. This year the club’s new leaders have an ambitious itinerary planned. Their goal is to gain more members, as well as go on as many ski trips as possible for the lowest prices. When you go with us, the bus only costs around $10-15 and you get discounted lift tickets, plus the night before trips we hold tune up nights where members can wax and sharpen their gear for free!” According to Norman, “You have to get up early to go on every trip, but at least with the bus you can sleep the whole way there, then ski/snowboard all day and not have anything to worry about.” The drives to the mountains can be long because the ski resorts are all in New Hampshire, which is why leaving early in the morning is crucial. “We usually leave for the mountain around 4:30 a.m. and depending on which mountain we are going, it takes between 3-4 hours to get there,” Medeiros said. “We like to get there right when it opens, around 8 a.m. so we can have a full day of boarding/skiing.” The Ski and Snowboard Club goes to at least four mountains every year, Waterville Valley Resort, Cannon Mountain, Cranmore Mountain Resort, and Bretton Woods. “Each mountain we go to is unique,” said Sousa. “Cannon is known for its high vertical peeks for fast and steep trails, Bretton Woods has slopes for all skill levels and has many trails which helps on busy ski days, and Waterville and Cranmore offer a little of everything with steep advanced trails and a lot of beginner/intermediate trails.” Ski and Snowboard Club is welcoming to new members of all skill levels. Each trip is a new opportunity to learn new skills and bond with new people. “You get to spend the whole day with your friends” said Norman “Plus it is a great time whether you have just started learning or you’ve been going for years.”
Photo on Flikr by: Jean Berthelot
Written by: Michael Perry Layout by: Mathew Melo
“Look here they come again. The looking do y look just wn at the like an arm ground be and overa cause the y carrying lls. And lo y are so a their phys ok at those wkward a not big en ics books glasses! O nd weird. ough to c h Stupid pla m o y ve God they r those zi glare from id shirts are so hu ts on their those bra ge! But th face. I hop ces will blin ey still are e they do d us.” not smile because th e
“Look here they come again. They look just like an army carrying their physics books looking down at the ground be cause they are so awkward and weird. Stupid plaid shirts and overalls. And look at those glasses! They’re so big they can see into the future with them! But they still are not big enough to cover those zits on their face. I hope they don’t smile because the glare from those braces will blind us. Nerds!!!” Many of us have faced the gauntlet of taunts like this by the cool kids in school. But what exactly is a nerd anyway? Has anyone ever come up with an actual definition of a nerd? In popular culture nerds are always the same whether it’s what they look like or what they like to do. Nerds are socially awkward. They don’t make eye contact with anyone who they think is above them in the social hierarchy. They always have big glasses that fall off their faces, and so they keep pushing them back up with their index finger. They wear pants that are really short so when they sit down it almost looks like they are wearing shorts. And for some reason they have acne everywhere and always have the sniffles. When they are not excelling in subjects like physics or geometry they spend their free time rifling through the latest issue of Spider-Man or the Incredible Hulk. They spend the rest of their free time playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. Heck they will probably even fix your computer if the price is right.
While the term nerd was made famous by the show Happy Days, Weird Al Yankovic’s song “White and Nerdy,” a parody of the song “Ridin’ Dirty” uses popular depictions like button-down shirts with nice dress pants and thick, black framed glasses. Weird Al raps about doing calculus just for the fun of it and also raps about Pi. Weird Al reminds us that although nerds seem to be outcasts because of what they look like or what they like to do, really just want to be a part of a crowd. We’re told to be ourselves or to embrace exactly who we are deep down inside, yet what happens when we get bullied for being us? Have you ever been made fun of because of what you look like or what you like to do for fun? I have and it was not fun. One of the most famous nerds is Steve Urkel, a character portrayed by actor Jaleel White on the hit television show Family Matters. Urkel was the nerdy neighbor of the Winslow family, the main characters and the focus of the show. Although Urkel’s time on Family Matters was
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supposed to be just a recurring character, his popularity on the show catapulted him to a mainstay of the show until it ended in the late 90s. In a 1991 New York Times article, the writer begins by describing Urkel’s nerdy ways. “He’s so unhip that now he’s cool, Steve Urkel, a regular in-your-face kind of guy. When he laughs, he snorts. When he talks, he whines in a nasal, grating voice. When he arrives, he intrudes, with his pants riding up his skinny waist and his mouth working overtime, popping out sassy, if not annoying, rejoinders.” Steve Urkel’s presence on Family Matters made the show about an African-American family living in Chicago, a must see on ABC’s TGIF line-up but his character was so popular that he also made some cameo on other TV shows like Full House. White showed up on Johnny Carson as a guest, in the form of Mr. White (sans glasses and nasally voice), and on the American Comedy Awards, White showed Bea Arthur how to “do the Urkel.” Today Family Matters still continues to be broadcasted on television, in syndication of course and his antics still emanate in popular culture from his “did I do that?” catchphrase or “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” In fact, a lot of our iconic phrases came from nerds in pop culture. “Gosh!” “Freakin’ idiot!,” and “Vote for Pedro” are just a few of the iconic quotes that came from the hit movie Napoleon Dynamite. Napoleon is a high school teen who wears glasses, sort of has a sinus problem because he always has his mouth open with his teeth hanging out. This nerd, however,
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became a cult icon in the eyes of those who watched the movie. In an article written by Lauren Duca in the Huffington Post, she talks about how Napoleon Dynamite became a cultural phenomenon. “Jon Heder [the actor who played Napoleon] will never really escape Napoleon Dynamite.” “Obviously, my life is saturated with people talking to me as if I’m him,” Heder said. What’s interesting about the past few years, though, is that the way of approaching him has noticeably shifted to nostalgia. “There’s this moment when people start to say, ‘Oh, I remember watching you as a kid!’ And that ages you.” Heder knows that experience himself through the “awesome ‘80s films” that had a similar effect on him growing up. Nerds have always been easy to make fun of, but the pop-culture versions find a way to be loveable, too. Maybe it’s
because deep down we all can relate to their struggles for acceptance and desire to be as weird as we want to be. Maybe we remember those times in high school when we, too, were ridiculed by the quarterback of the football team. Maybe it’s rooting for the underdog. Whatever the reason, nerds are people, too, and nerds are now cool, so deal with it. Nerds have always been easy to make fun of, but the pop-culture versions find a way to be loveable, too. Maybe it’s because deep down we all can relate to their struggles for acceptance and desire to be as weird as we want to be. Maybe we remember those times in high school when we, too, were ridiculed by the quarterback of the football team. Maybe it’s rooting for the underdog. Whatever the reason, nerds are people, too, and nerds are now cool, so deal with it. d
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The day I made the front page of Reddit By Reisa Hines Layout By Megan Pereen
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I
trust Reddit implicitly. Every morning, I head to my comfy chair with my life-sustaining mug of coffee and check out all that the good people at Reddit can offer me, where the most popular contributions make it to the front (home) page based on an up or down voting system. You can find literally anything on Reddit. Kittens being mischievous, horror story writing prompts, historians and scientists sharing their knowledge, nominees for the next Darwin Awards, you name it. Right now, I’m looking at a photo of a kid who dressed up like a fart for Halloween, complete with tooting horn. It’s a smorgasbord of delight. One forum board is titled, “TIFU” or Today I F*cked Up. Which calls for people to share their head slapping stupidest moments for public delight and ridicule. This one’s my favorite. It’s like the “They’re Just Like Us” columns in the trashy celebrity magazines I pretend I’m too high-minded to read. I need to know there are other functioning F*ck ups in this world; reading stories from people who occasionally f*ck up gives me a manufactured sense of self-esteem (and I’m sure I’m not the only one). Here is the story of how I ended up on the front page of Reddit after posting on the TIFU board… and how it changed my life. I am also a mother and like most, I have my good parenting days and bad parenting days. One fateful day about a year ago, I took my kids to Barnes & Noble because there they have the ever-entertaining train table in the children’s section. Side Note: I have met the most interesting people at the B&N train table: SoHo performance artists, eco-friendly architects featured in Architectural Digest, Peace Corps volunteers, Somali pirates, the whole lot. While placing my son on the ground, my watch got caught on his pants and down they went revealing that he decided that morning that underwear was too constricting. He immediately yelled, “I’m not wearing underwear!” in front of several judgey adults and at least two poor, innocent young girls. I grabbed my son like I was gunning for the Heisman trophy, and practically ran. Because I have this personal affliction where I must tell people everything, I decided that I must tell the Internet! From my post on TIFU:
Since r/TIFU has about 4.5 million readers, it didn’t take long before my retelling started to get attention. But what I failed to factor in is the desire of most people on the Internet to tell parents they are the bane of society for every little misstep they make. I have no idea how people in the public eye can handle being slammed for every outfit they wear and every person they date. By the end of the day, I was emotionally exhausted. I didn’t know any of these people, and although the vast majority of the hundreds of comments I received were parents providing sympathy and similar stories of parental misadventures, there were many other users who felt the need to add insult to injury. One person actually called me “a husk of a human being.” Other people insisted physical punishment was the only acceptable means of disciplining my kids. Someone even suggested murder. I didn’t read the last bunch of comments; I’d seen enough to lose faith in people’s humanity. I had to go hide in the welcoming arms of Little Debbie for a few days. My story pales in comparison to some people thrust into the spotlight and who have received death threats and promises of malicious intent. Caroline Criado-Perez, a women’s rights activist and journalist who won her campaign to put legendary author, Jane Austen, on UK’s new 10 pound note, was inundated with tweets shouting objections and violent threats like “I will find you, and you don’t want to know what I will do to you when I do. You’re pathetic. Kill yourself. Before I do.”
Parliament member, Stella Creasy, publically offered CriadoPerez support, and was promptly wrapped up in her own trolling scandal. She was harassed by 148 different twitter accounts and when she went to police, fearful that online threats may turn into physical violence, people dismissed her worry claiming she was crying wolf. Creasy tells the Telegraph, “One police officer even suggested I was picking on the perpetrators by retweeting their threats- until I pointed out that current legislation says you must tell someone to stop.” In the end, Peter Nunn was convicted of malicious intent and jailed for 18 weeks. Minute vindication also came for Ciado-Perez. John Nimmo and Isabelle Sorley pleaded guilty to Twitter trolling. The Guardian says that the onslaught of abuse has prompted an internet campaign to introduce a fast acting button to report online misconduct. There’s something freeing about being behind the Internet curtain. Reddit allows me the safe haven to discuss absolutely anything with brutal honesty, without the fear of my usual
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Top Ten SubReddits acquaintances passing judgement on my closet skeletons. Unfortunately this freedom comes with a dark side, something akin to the Gyges Effect first told by Plato. Essentially it’s that the powers of a ring that granted its owner invisibility were corrupting (Lord of the Rings fans will recognize this story). The anonymity that comes from the Internet creates a disconnection between users. Conversations lack nonverbal signals between partners, which inhibits our ability to be affected by others’ emotions, and that can make people kind of mean. In some cases, this goes well beyond mean and into the realm of “trolling.” Psychology Today reports that science has stepped in and combed through millions upon millions of interactions through social media and forum boards and has devised the Global Assessment of Internet Trolling (GAIT) test to evaluate people’s behavior online and found a correlation between trolling and a trifecta of personality disorders: sadism (finding pleasure in other’s pain), psychopathy (lack of empathy), and Machiavellianism (the desire to manipulate for personal gain). There is also an association between excessive use of technology and antisocial behavior, but we didn’t need science to figure that out. After some time away, I got up the courage to go back to my post and what I found revived my faith in humanity (somewhat). When I scrolled through some of the 700+ comments, I found that users upvoted funny and positive comments and down voted the trolls so deeply, I wasted time searching for their hateful words, giving me some hope that human decency is winning the fight against the trolls hiding under our internet bridges. I’m going to make a somewhat controversial statement. Understand, I believe this is certainly the exception rather than the rule, but indirectly, my Reddit trolls helped motivate me to change my stagnant life. The comment that said I was a “husk of a human being,” was particularly devastating because the preconceived notions tore at my own fragile views of my capabilities as a person. I was scared they were right. For close to a decade, it seemed like my only purpose in life was to wash laundry and do dishes. I didn’t have a moment that was my own. Some jerk, whose only power stands in their venomous keyboard strokes, reached into my soul and claimed they found nothing there. I looked at that word “husk” and said to myself that I can’t allow that to be my defining moniker. A few months down the road I saw an opportunity to step out of my little box. I filed for divorce, moved to a different state, went back to school, and imagined my self reinvention teen-movie-montage-style. I still trust Reddit. I trust it to provide me with endless moments of laughter, news stories, interesting facts, reports on scientific breakthroughs, and anecdotal evidence that I’m not the only slow turtle in this race. But while I usually shy away from absolutes, I will never allow a person teetering on the fence of sociopathy to influence me again. d 26
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based on activity in the SubReddit on a monthly basis.
1. /r/pics 2. /r/funny 3. /r/politics 4. /r/gaming 5. /r/AskReddit 6. /r/WorldNews 7. /r/news 8. /r/videos 9. /r/IAmA 10. /r/todayilearned
#HASHTAG “But how do we hashtag? And dear God, why do we hashtag?”
By Reisa Hines Layout by Olivia Bean
T
he moment came very unexpectedly. The moment my 5 year old son, while standing upon a large rock on the lawn of a New England castle, jumped toward the skies yelling, “Hashtag I Believe I can Fly!” He collapsed in a fit of giggles, and I stared at him bewildered asking, “do you even know what a hashtag is?” The answer was no. No, he did not. But neither do so many who do not frequent the twitter-sphere. The now ubiquitous symbol, previously known as the pound sign, can be used for self-promotion, public discourse, marketing campaigns, social activism, and my personal favorite-the Humble Brag. The word hashtag–the term that refers to the # symbol in Twitter–is a combination of the word “hash” from hash mark and the word “tag”, a way to mark something as belonging to a specific category. The birth of the hashtag wasn’t the culmination of in depth research nor was the idea developed by Twitter itself. In 2007, BarCamp co-founder Chris Messina, proposed utilizing the pound sign to denote searchable subjects for interested groups because the # was an easy symbol to reach on his, now fossilized, Nokia Feature phone. Once the idea picked up steam, Twitter added the hyperlink and the rest is history.
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“One of the most enlightening hashtags I have seen was #WhyIStayed, which helped bring to light all the possible reasons victims of domestic abuse may hesitate to leave their situations.”
But how do we hashtag? And dear God, why do we hashtag? A Hashtag can be used to mark a currently popular topic (or trending, as the cool kids call it) on social media. Any topic that we, as social but technologically dependent animals, wish to discuss for attention online. Different from Twitter, a hashtag on Instagram collects photos for members of an unofficial group or community to fawn over and admire, such as: #GermanShepardsOfInstagram or #TattoosOfInstagram or, the widely known and always relevant, #AlpacasOfInstagram. I can tell you the breed of every dog my canineobsessed girlfriends own from just a brief look at my Instagram feed. You can use one or many to get your point across. If you are female, feel free to list them off in rapid succession: #HellYes #BaeCaughtMeTweeting #PumpkinSpiceLatte #BasicBitch #VampireDiaries #WritingForPopCulture. Some may argue this point, claiming it is bad hashtag etiquette, but studies show using multiple hashtags on Instagram makes your post more popular. Don’t try this on Facebook or Twitter, though, because people will roll their eyes and stop paying attention to you. That’s not me being mean. That’s science. It’s easy to get in on the conversation. Step 1: Consider your likes, dislikes, political affiliations, life events, and current media obsessions Step 2: Devise your plan of attack and either type your thoughts with a little joie de vive, ponder the meaning of life, or gripe like a grumpy old man. Step 3: Be clever but careful when choosing your topic and make sure it’s in vogue. Bonus points for a witty and well delivered pun. Step 4: Eliminate all spaces and capitalize all words. Step 5: This part is most important: Put the hashtag symbol in front and the whole shebang at the end of your tweet, unless embedding the
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hashtag enhances the flow of your message. Good Example: My divorce is final today! #AllTheSingleLadies Bad Example: ThisIsHowMyBoyfriendUsesHashtags# Step 6: Go nuts Private businesses and government offices use hashtags to drum up conversation to promote products and current social issues. But what about the average user? I was reluctant to adopt the use of hashtags, because as someone who doesn’t exactly possess a strong media presence (my rarely used Twitter account has 16 followers), I felt like the movement wasn’t meant for me. So I knew I had to use it with intentional self-deprecation, lest I be seen as the phony I am. So when I finally caved and posted my first selfie, I made sure to include #ImOneOfThosePeopleNow. At least now my reputation as a sarcastic, cool mom who doesn’t adhere to current trends is safe. But Sara Genereux, my lovely sister and caretaker of the Instagram star, Rosco the German Shepard, says “I’m one who finds some conformity with social norms if I find them amusing or entertaining.” There’s the key: make it funny. Umass Dartmouth sophomore, Hayley Williams, echoes the sentiment, “I use them as a joke in photo captions. I used to get so annoyed seeing them on Facebook. But on Twitter, I liked them because I could click them and read all the funny little memes and relatable things. Like #GrowingUpWithSiblings? I’d think, ‘Yea, me too!’” Biology Major and CNA Kristina Kozak says, “I use them when I rant, they’re soothing and cathartic.” We all take to social media when we need to purge our opinions, because we know other people feel the same way. But since hashtags are only used to weed out certain topics from the exponentially
growing Internet, it is important to keep hashtags there. Rebecca Rice, a member of the currently undefeated Umass Dartmouth Women’s Rugby team, says what we are all thinking, “When people say them non-ironically out loud, it’s weird. #SorryNotSorry, is the hashtag really necessary?!” Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake did a sketch comedy video to show the absurdity of communicating entirely in hashtags, watch it if you think you need an intervention. Hashtagging is a way to find individuals interested in similar activities and create a manufactured sense of togetherness from a pseudo-event such as the Academy Awards or the Super Bowl half-time show. Engaged couples can find articles online dedicated to cultivating the perfect wedding hashtag for their guests to use on the big day. Umass Dartmouth sorority member Emily Ramirez shared with me that her sorority, Iota Delta Nu, is the only chapter in the U.S., and so when she and her sisters use the hashtag on Instagram, it creates a community photo album for everyone to find quickly. Hashtags can also unite a group dedicated to the same social movement. When issues arise in politics that people cannot sit quietly through, they must make their voices heard. Hashtags have been at the forefront of numerous social activist movements, inspiring people to share their stories and engage in debates with the level of anonymity the computer screen provides. Now people can attend virtual rallies to fight for what they believe in on a platform that reaches almost every corner of the earth, and all while sitting in our bunny pajamas. Television show creator, Shonda Rhimes, however, criticizes the notion that the
hashtag is a viable and influential activism tool, lovingly dubbed “slacktivism”, by saying that, “...a hashtag is not a movement. A hashtag does not make you Dr. King.” She may be right regarding intense issues in need of reform, from world hunger to ISIS. The # sign won’t stop school shootings or heroin overdoses. But exposure to conversations and strength in numbers have made companies crack under pressure to change unfair policies like in the case of Victoria Secret’s “body positivity” campaigns, which were only promoting thin, white women. They’ve giving a voice to victims of sexual assault and a platform for women irate over the defunding of Planned Parenthood to share their positive experiences with the practice. One of the most enlightening hashtags I have seen was #WhyIStayed, which helped bring awareness to the reasons victims of domestic abuse struggled with leaving their abusers. This kind of media presence helps raise awareness, which can in turn, bring about change. No matter your reason, hashtags are a form of expression, be it political, creative, or emotional. Hashtags quite literally cement events on the virtual timeline from 2007 to present day. Without looking, I made a bet with my mediaphobic boyfriend that #WheresMyHoverboard was probably trending on October 21, 2015 in dedication of Michael J. Fox and Christopher LLoyd. Winner, Winner, I was. So go out into the digital world and mark your place, just keep in mind that it is never truly erased. So be careful, or you could be responsible for the next overused, laughable hashtag mocked on SNL. #YOLO d
Quick guild to #hashtags
Author’s favorite tweets:
On social media platforms, namely Twitter and Instagram, a hashtag, more commonly recognized as the pound sign (#), is used to mark or tag relevant subject matter. Its use makes tweets, photos, and status updates easily categorized and accessed by users searching for commentary on social activism, media events, consumer products, or a good laugh.
@Noodlez56: “I once took a girl to Starbucks because I forgot her name. #AwkwardDate @TinyHumanHerder: “When singing along to Lorde’s “Royals”, my then 3 year old son would belt out, “And you can call me green bean!” #MisheardLyrics
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Yoga:Be Flexible Even When Your Schedule Isn’t By Alyssa Kudzma Layout by: Megan Pereen
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ometimes in college, it can be hard to find time to take care of yourself physically and mentally when you’re so weighed down with work you can’t even seem to find time to eat something more complex than Easy Mac. But just like homework and work, your health is a responsibility that won’t go away just because you don’t have time for it. This is where yoga comes in. Before you protest, hear me out: yoga isn’t just for girls who want to look good in stretchy black pants or people who can already casually slide into a split. The reason it’s become so popular is because it’s something that can benefit anyone both physically and mentally. In fact, many of the problems that come with college living can be solved by yoga, so it’s a great addition to any student’s schedule A mental health study by the Associated Press and mtvU showed that 80% of college students say they sometimes or frequently experience stress in their daily lives. Unlike alcohol, drugs, or food, yoga is a healthy way to cope with stress and anxiety. According to Tiffany Gagnon of Men’s Fitness, yoga activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which offsets the “fight or flight” response caused by the sympathetic nervous system. Basically, it calms you down when you’re needlessly panicking. Yoga also combines focused and steady breathing with flowing movements, causing a greater sense of
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body-awareness. This clears pace in your head and gives your brain something to concentrate on other than the distractions that often plague us throughout the day. This is why Nicole, a UMD student, regularly makes time for yoga sessions in her dorm room. She says, “It gives me time to myself to relax, and it forces me to stop focusing on my problems.” Taking a minimental vacation can refresh your view and give you a more calm, aware perspective. Even if you’re already mentally stable, you can benefit from the physical aspects of yoga. The most obvious perk is increased flexibility, which increases your range of movement and prevents muscular injuries. This could be especially helpful for athletes, runners, and weightlifters. People often have imbalances in strength and flexibility in their muscles – for example, your left leg might be much more flexible than your right – and this can lead to injury or inability to achieve good form. Yoga reveals these differences and helps balance them out with stretching. Yoga has many other benefits, including boosting immunity, promoting weight loss, and improving digestion. Stretching every day, even if it’s only for a few minutes, will make noticeable differences in every aspect of life. To get involved you could take classes at the UMD athletic center or a privately owned studio, or you can just find some videos online and lay a mat down in your room.
Umass Music Past By Nate Goncalo Layout by Megan Pereen
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’m a second generation UMD student. My dad went here when it was SMU (Southeastern Massachusetts University was the school’s name before it became part of the UMass system). When I saw that some group called “That Drummer That DJ” was coming to campus, I asked my dad if he had seen any cool concerts when he went here? “Heck yes I did. I saw The Clash and The Tubes at SMU!” he said. My Dad had to be lying. The Clash were the kings of punk rock in the 70s and 80s; they couldn’t have come to UMD...could they? After some investigation I found out my dad was right. Southeastern Massachusetts University, of all places, hosted dozens of concerts with famous, heavy hitter artists. Here are a few examples: Bob Dylan, folk legend – November 1st, 1975 The Ramones, punk rock legends – October 11th, 1984
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The Kinks, famous British Invasion band – March 7th, 1980 Dart Magazine
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Frank Zappa, famous experimental rock artist – December 2nd 1973 SMU even had it’s own music festival in 1970. Who knew? The Woods of Dartmouth Pop Music Festival brought in an estimated 100,000 people to our campus. It was three days of music, fun, and peace from May 1st to 3rd; essentially a mini Woodstock. The students running the event managed to book Manfred Mann, Johnny Cash, legendary country artist J. Geils Band, The Guess Who, and The June 30th, 1990 Byrds to headline. They Might Be Giants, famous 90s cult For some context on how big these bands rock group - April 24th, 1993 were (or were soon to become): The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, famou Manfred Mann – “Blinded By The Light” Boston based Ska group - May 4th, 1998 #1 on Billboard February 1977 3 Doors Down, popular alternative rock J. Geils Band – “Centerfold” band - May 2nd, 2001 #1 February 1982, “Freezeframe” #4 April 1982 The whole point here is....where are these huge acts today! Who did campus have The Guess Who – “American Woman/No last year? They must’ve been big...oh...we Sugar Tonight” #1 May 1970 didn’t even have a concert? This “Drummer DJ” band must’ve had some hit singlThe Byrds – “Turn! Turn! Turn!” oh...they didn’t? A group of students in #1 December 1965, “Mr. Tambourine Man” the 70s managed to organize a three day #1 June 1965 music festival with huge bands and there wasn’t even a spring concert last year! These songs play every day on any classic Why don’t we have huge rock bands and rock station around the country. The Guess pop artists coming to campus today? Is Who actually hit #1 status on May 9th, just it administration? Students not caring? days after playing at SMU! The 70s and 80s Bands becoming overly commercialized? may seem far away, but UMD/SMU even There’s no definite reason. Hopefully had big artists come to campus during the UMASS will look to its past and get the 90s and early 2000s: big bands back to campus!
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After reading many explanations that were empty excuses like “because they just suck” or “because they’re ugly,” I came across a 2014 Daily Dot article by blogger Khai Devon that offered the first justification with potential: “There’s no strong emotional element that unites Nickelback fans.” At Billy Joel’s Fenway Park concert this past July, which I was fortunate enough to attend, he acknowledged to his audience of almost 40,000 that he was able to garner as much enthusiasm as ever despite his falling off the top charts long ago. As I looked around that night, I saw not only forty-somethings like my mom who accompanied me to the show, but also millenials like myself, and even young children. The words of the Great Piano Man stuck with me and got me thinking along other lines too: what does the future hold for twenty-first century rock musicians? It’s impossible to argue with the fact that the sixties and seventies yielded some seriously
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talented artists. But who’s to say that kind of magic can’t happen again? Well, apparently, lots of people. Most notably, Kiss bassist Gene Simmons. “Where’s the next Bob Dylan?” he asked in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. “Where’s the next Beatles? Where are the songwriters? Where are the creators?” Like many rock ‘n roll enthusiasts longing for “the way it used to be,” he seems to believe the best days of the genre are behind us. Also, apparently, modern rock bands are losing any and all potential staying power by “selling out.” Green Day “sold out” when they were signed to a major record label. Nirvana “sold out” when Nevermind blew up the charts. Practically the second a music group signs a contract, appears on TV, or makes any other inroads to popularity, they get labeled as sellouts and shunned by the communities that once accepted them. So, what is a “sellout” anyway? The dictionary definition is that it’s used informally to mean “a person who compromises his or her personal
values, integrity, talent or the like for money or personal advancement.” But just because a band or song is successful, does that necessarily mean they’ve compromised their personal integrity? Former Nirvana drummer and current Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl shared his thoughts on the subject in a recent interview. Why are things the way they are? His commentary reiterated an idea that already seems to be deeply ingrained in our society: mass production and commercialism = bad. Grohl offered the explanation that because of their catchiness and listenable quality, people often assume that the big hit songs don’t come from a real place in the songwriter’s heart, that they’re crafted carelessly and without a lot of thought being given—in short, that the band “took the easy way out.” Does all this “selling out” mean that rock is dead? 56% of users polled by Debate.org insisted that rock as a whole was, in fact, not dead. The collective response from these yay-sayers is that as long as the emotion behind earlier rock’s “greats” is remembered, revered and carried forward, the genre will never truly die. I was raised on rock music. Although it would be years before I fully came to appreciate it, the 60s, 70s and 80s hits station was always the background music of choice in my house. In the early days of my adolescence, when I started listening to newer and more obscure alternative bands, my mom would often remind me that they wouldn’t exist if the groups that dominated the 60s and 70s hadn’t been there to influence them. At thirteen my response was probably something in the realm of “Oh, Mom, that’s such an old person thing to say!” But it wasn’t long before I realized how true it was. The greatness of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones isn’t going to be forgotten anytime soon. It’s still pretty common to see young teenagers wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the Stones’ iconic tongue or the Abbey Road album art. I’d also like to believe that somewhere, deep down, people continue to feel connected to and invigorated by the “largeness” of rock music: the bursts and thrashes,
“somewhere, deep down, people continue to feel connected to and invigorated by the “largeness” of rock music” the idea of “doing it big” or “doing it up.” When “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” kicked in at the ballpark that night accompanied by dazzling lights flashing perfectly in time with the drumbeats, everyone from age six to sixty, ate it up. I’ve been to quite a few lesser-known rock artists’ concerts in my day, and that same energy is there. Writer Michele Catalano said in a 2012 Forbes article, “Rock has a certain joy to it, a celebratory feel beneath the heavy bass and driving beats. Rock always feels like you’re holding something with a pulse in your hands and forever feels like it needs to feed off your enjoyment of it in order to stay alive.” That’s never going away. In a 2013 article titled “Alternative Rock is the New Classic Rock. And That’s OK” published in The New Republic, Michael Tedder reminds us that artists who fall under the “alternative” category “didn’t want to rid the world of Led Zeppelins; they just wanted a non-derivative Led Zeppelin of their own. This is fine, of course, because Led Zeppelin and The Beatles got their start doing their own spin on their heroes. It’s how art works.” And with twentieth-century musical legends still being hailed as heroes, why should we rule out the possibility of other new rock acts being talented enough to rise to the same magnitude? There could definitely be musicians out there influenced strongly enough by still-existent icons to want to make new magic— still determined to create that emotional unity among fans—and driven enough to do just that. d
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O D N NINTE
g n i v i v Sur s r a W e l so n o C e h T
When one thinks about the video game console war of our generation, you have to turn to Playstation versus Xbox. The ongoing rivalry between the two giants of Sony and Microsoft has been a heated topic of discussion that has been tearing friendships apart ever since the Xbox first came onto the gaming scene in 2001. But where does Nintendo fit into all of this? How did a company that was founded in 1889, that released their first ever video game console in 1977 seventeen years before the PlayStation even came out, survive being third wheel in such a competitive industry? “They stuck to their guns. While I’ve always been an Xbox person myself, you rarely hear Xbox fans talk with such praise and love for their console and signature games like Nintendo
fans do.” Senior Adrien Mercier of UMass Dartmouth said, “What games on the Xbox or PlayStation have as much hype as Super Smash Brothers or Mario Kart?” If theirs is one thing that Nintendo has done better than it’s opponents, it’s sticking to their guns. With the continued release of games like Pokemon which was first released in 1996, and Super Smash Bros which was first released in 1999. It’s no wonder that the company has retained fans even through the Xbox and PlayStation saga. But to really have a full understanding of how this company has survived through the years one would have to look at the history. Nintendo was first founded in 1889, by Fusajiro Yamauchi and was originally intended to be a hanafuda playing card company. Hanafuda cards were a special type of playing card of Japanese
Mario through the Ages By Alyssa Kudzma Layout by Megan Pereen
Ever since the 1970’s when Nintendo went from manufacturing cards and toys to producing video games, the company has become almost unimaginably successful. Today, they’re one of the biggest, most influential names in the video game industry. But it wasn’t always high-def graphics and complex gameplay. To understand the full scope of Nintendo’s empire, we’ll take a nostalgic trip through the timeline of Nintendo’s most iconic hero, Mario.
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All photos courtesy of Nintendo
By Tim McDonald Layout by Megan Pereen
origin that was used to play a number of accrd games, the name literally translates to “flower cards.” The company continued to grow larger and larger as a playing card company in Japan, and the cards eventually found their way around the world. In 1933 the company of Yamauchi Nintendo & Co. was established and the name of the company was later changed to Nintendo Playing Card Co. in 1951 and then finally to just Nintendo Co. in 1963. Between those name changes the company started creating and became the first successful producers of mass-produced plastic playing cards, and even started producing cards for Walt Disney, opening a new market in child playing cards. In 1966 after a few years of bad playingcard sales Nintendo moved into the toy and game industry with their Ultra Hand, which was an extendable arm developed by its maintenance engineer Gunpei Yokoi in his free time. This lead to the creation of the new “Nintendo Games” department and was followed by toys like Ultra Machine, Love Tester and the Kousenjuu series of light gun games. Because of how competitive the toy industry was at the time with companies like Bandai and Tomy, Nintendo shifted its focus in 1973 to their Laser Clay Shooting System,
which instantly rivaled bowling as a major pastime in Japan. Although the Laser Clay Shooting System had proven to be an popular system, it had to be shut down because of the high costs it took to run them, but Nintendo had found their niche. The release of home video game consoles for Nintendo didn’t start until 1977 with the Color TV-Game, but by that time Nintendo had already become a staple in Japan and worldwide. The Color TV-Game was a series of five home-dedicated consoles for Nintendo, and was only sold in Japan. Even though they were only released in Japan, total sales of the first four consoles reached over 4 million and had the highest sales number of any first generation console, which included the Magnavox Odyssey series and the Home Pong series released by Atari. Games for the Color TV-Game included Pong, Block Breaker, and a bird’seye-view racing game that implemented a steering wheel and gearshift. But for Nintendo, the worldwide popularity that they know today first started with the release of the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) in 1985, and the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) in 1990. With the release of the NES in 1985, Nintendo marked its first home video game console release outside of Japan. And saw the beginning of Nintendo’s most iconic games, like The Legend Of Zelda and Metroid. Nintendo even continued to repair the NES consoles all the way up until 2007, when they had to discontinue the repairs over lack of parts. But the release of the SNES was a global success for Nintendo, selling 49.10 million systems worldwide and once again becoming the highest selling console of its era. We saw games like Super Mario World, Donkey Kong, and Super Mario Kart all make an appearance
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on the SNES. Even though the SNES was such a success, it was the last console release that Nintendo dominated. With the next generation of consoles producing the PlayStation 1 in 1994, SNES marked the end of Nintendo’s rule over the video game industry and started the beginning of the console war we all know today. But with the release of Sony’s Playstation 1 selling over 100 million plus copies to Nintendo 64’s 32 million, Nintendo had to find a new outlet to take over. And their handheld gaming system the Gameboy had already been seeing the success that they needed. The Gameboy released in 1989, and was the first handheld console of The Gameboy line. With games like Tetris, Tennis, and Super Mario Land the handheld system saw its entire shipment of one million units sell out within a few weeks. The success of the first game lead Nintendo to release the GameBoy color in 1998, which we all know today to be the system that launched the Pokemon series into the world, and the world has never even thought about giving it back. The Game Boy and Game Boy Color have combined to sell 118.69 million units worldwide, and for most of the millennials was the introduction to the video game industry. Knowing the history of this over 100 year old company brings a lot of information to light, and shows us that the console war
By Michael Burke
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we know of today wasn’t always dominated by the two giants of Microsoft and Sony. Without knowing Nintendo’s full history one might conclude that the company was bound to suffer after the recent failing of the Wii U, which the Japanese video game company had slashed the predicted sales numbers for from 9 to 2.8 million after the release in January of 2014. The lack of sales forced Nintendo to report a loss of over 336$ million dollars in the fiscal year of 2014, something that the company never expected to happen. But Nintendo is much more than just a video game company, and that is something that most gamers today fail to realize. “I honestly thought Nintendo was only around 40 years old,” Said Junior Jeremiah Hopkins after asked about Nintendo’s history, “Everyone that I talk to thinks they’ll close within the next 20 years, I don’t know if that’s just our lack of knowledge on the company or what, but if you had brought up in an argument that Nintendo was founded in 1889 I don’t know if anyone would believe you.” Nintendo isn’t just a company that rose to fame with the NES or Gameboy Color. It is a company that has built itself up over time to become a world leader in industry and an innovator in the technology world. They have survived through 100 years of change in an industry that has seen the collapse of so many others; a silly console war isn’t going to take this giant down. d
Layout by Alicia Boulos
Metal Gear Solid
The problem with Quiet
By Tim McDonald Layout by Megan Pereen
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veryone’s afraid of her, she doesn’t talk, she hums relaxing tunes through the radio, and shes almost completely naked the entire game. Now if you haven’t played at least a few hours into the new Metal Gear Solid game you may have no clue what I’m talking about, but the addition of their newest character Quiet to the Metal Gear ranks has caused some gamers to seriously think twice about picking up the newest installment in this famous series. As you walk around the open world landscape you may notice a few glowing differences between all of the male characters and Quiet, the first is that she is almost completely naked the entire game, compared to her male counterparts who are strapped head to toe in body armor, (why would a women need armor right?) Is she bullet-proof? I mean female soldiers really deploy into dangerous countries with just a bra and panties don’t they? BUT WAIT. You can cover her completely in Blood, Silver or Gold so it’s okay now right? Another glaring disparity between Quiet and the other characters is that she doesn’t have a voice, she’s in the game strictly to scout enemy outposts and kill any opponent you command her to. The issue with misogyny in video games is apparent, and the developer Hideo Kojima has been a representive of this issue ever since his creation of Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball back in 2006. Kojima even tweeted before Metal Gear was released that his aim was to make Quiet more “erotic” than past female characters, to make the sale of figurines and to allow for cosplayers. Females represent 50% of the gamers around the world, and it’s time for the video
game industry to regonize this fact. One of the worst parts of this game is when you are in between missions, riding around in your helicopter, not only does the camera attract directly to Quiets chest, but the game give you the ability to zoom in and get a closer look, as if someone needed to zoom in to notice her extremely detailed and large breasts. If you wait just a minute Quiet will start stretching in her seat, going into the “downward dog” yoga position both facing towards you and away, the game makes sure that you don’t miss this seeing as it’s the only thing happening on the screen.
Female gamers deserve a stronger character, a character that actually has the ability to stand up for herself and doesn’t delegate that responsibility to the main male character, a character that is put into the spotlight of the game for her wits and fighting skills, and not that the only view we get of her is of her breasts or thong every time she comes on screen. For me personally, this was the first Metal Gear Solid game that I have played, and although it is one of the more enjoyable video games I have ever played, I can’t help but feel wrong everytime I send my partner out into the firefight half naked while I walk in covered head to toe in bullet-proof armor.
Did you know? The first ever Metal Gear Game ever released came out back in 1987 for the MSX2? The MSX for those of you who don’t know, was a Microsoft standardized home computer that was first announced by Microsoft in 1983 and was the primary platform for Konami before the release of the NES. Metal Gear is one of the only game series to be released for the MSX and NES and still be around today. Now 28 years later the series is still going strong, and d rumors for a sequel to Phantom Pain are already swirling about.
Racism In Pornography By Amanda Ormseth Layout by Megan Pereen
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hen you think of racism, perhaps pornography isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. The taboo itself has grown extremely popular in our mainstream society in just the last few decades. While pornography is not a new thing, it has let sexual obsession become not only accepted but expected in today’s society. Though porn has been around long before our generation, it was never like it is today. Pornography used to be a challenge to get your hands on; whether it was little boys stealing their father’s Playboy or an adult going to rent an X-rated movie in the back of a video store. Today, with such easy access to the internet, pornography is all around us. Because it is now so ubiquitous, porn gains a certain realness that appears to be a normal part of our everyday popular culture.
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Although pornography is not a reality, it’s no secret that it loves to convey stereotyped fantasies, inequality, and exploitation. Within porn lies more than just fetishes and threesomes, there are many culturally problematic sexualizations that get overlooked because ‘its just porn.’ Don’t get me wrong, many forms of media we consume could be considered racist. The problem with identifying and writing about racism is the fact that people still have trouble understanding it. Thanks to the Civil Rights movement, blatant examples of racism in mainstream media have become less acceptable. Porn, however, gets to be that much more discriminating because it is a privately consumed type of media. Porn already serves to degrade people, so racism fits right in.
“In porn, they don’t count it as interracial unless a black man is in it”
While some people like to defend porn for not being an adequate indicator of our racial attitudes, it comes as no surprise that people are attracted to all kinds of different things. While porn is known for many things, racist titles and stereotypical situations are at the top of the list. Porn loves these stereotypes because they are easy to market. Sex therapist Dr. Marty Klein says people love to categorize other people and that “consumers look for the material they seek online with simple, familiar search terms.” When people of color are used in pornography it is usually made clear in the titles. This just means that skin color is still important to consumers despite our recent progress. One of the most popular search terms in the porn world is ‘interracial.’ While interracial should mean sex between people of different races it only represents porn involving black men with white women; and when asked, 8 out of 10 students thought interracial meant black and white. “In porn, they don’t count it as interracial unless a black man is in it,” says Asian porn star Cindy Starfall. “So, even though for me everyone I work with is interracial because I’ve never had an Asian co-star, it’s not labeled as interracial.” Throughout history people of color have always been portrayed as hypersexual. While black men have been perceived as sexual deviants, black women were considered promiscuous. This is a big marketing tool for pornographers. According to African American performer Mickey Mod, men are almost always cast as some type of thug or another inappropriate stereotype. A majority of the people portrayed as transvestites or transsexuals in pornography are also people of color according to the actor. This is just another example of depicting them as ‘social deviants,’ departing from usual or social standards. The big black penis stereotype is one of the more popular ones, depicting well endowed black men with small white women, as if to make them look animalistic. While it may seem trivial, this type of categorization just reinforces all stereotypes against black people. “In some ways in mainstream porn there’s this idea that black women aren’t as marketable, that we’re not as innocent as, say, a blonde white girl,” said Nikki Darling in an interview
just last September. She explains that she makes less than white women even though they are doing the same scenes. But this comes as no surprise In the book Pornland, author Gail Dines writes that women of color are generally confined to a genre of porn called ‘gonzo.’ Gonzo skips the story line and heads straight for the sex – this genre lacks any plot or appeal for the actress. Dines’ entire book is filled with reasons porn is ruining our culture and while the author has many valid arguments, having travelled around the country in an effort to dissect the porn industry, some adult actors debate that she hasn’t gotten adequate feedback from actual industry workers. “Racism is a symptom of the bigger problem of society and porn no more contributes to that than any other form of commercial media. While there is certainly an element of racism in some adult movies, this is by no means the barometer to judge all pornography. This would be like judging all priests based on a few child molesters or all Southern white males based on a few members of the Ku Klux Klan,” said adult actress Sinnamon Love in an interview. “We wouldn’t make the things if people weren’t buying the things,” Mickey Mod says. “When people want highly problematic racialized content, people make those scenes—and they do really well.” While this kind of pornography is likely to promote racistsexist behavior, the real problem is the lack of concern about this racist pornography in the liberal and radical community. Because porn is meant for personal entertainment, it gets difficult to identify how much racism actually exists in the porn industry. It’s hard to determine what exactly is discriminatory when people are buying these stereotypes. Like most forms of media, pornography certainly has its racist elements and just like all pop culture, everyone involved is just trying to find a way to make the most money for themselves. Whether it involves using stereotypes of race and sex, everything in pornography would otherwise be considered offensive but because it’s personal preference, it’s considered ‘just business.’ Pornography is just another place in which racism prevails.
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Contraception
By Tia Brown Layout by Olivia Bean
There are multiple types of sexually transmitted infections (STI) that are passed through sexual activities when we fail to utilize the many form of contraception we have available to us. Limiting ourselves from common knowledge about the history of contraception and the many forms of contraceptive methods not only makes our chances of becoming pregnant or impregnating someone greater, but also puts us at risk of contracting these infections.
Method
Side Effect
Implantable Rod 3 years
Weight gain,abdominal-breast pain
History 3000 bc First condom made from fish bladders, linen sheaths, and animal intestine
1873 Comstock act passed which prohibited advertising and distribution of contraception.
1883 Condomsand diaphragms made from vulcanized rubber
Copper IUD 10 months
1938 Judge lifts the federal ban on birth control (Comstock act) diaphragms became popular
Bleeding, inflammatation tear of uterus
Shot/Injection
Chlamydia
3 months
Oral (The Pill) 1 xday Blood clots, heart attack
Syphilis
Exposer to higher levels of estrogen
3 weeks
Everytime
Top 3 diseases in the USA
Allergic reactions
Introduction of Plan B
Use of copper IUD for emergency contraception began to grow
2013
Men Everytime
1,326 out of 100,00
Allergic reactions
Chlamydia
Spermicide
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1999
Everytime
Female Condom
44
First contraceptive implant(Norplant)
Plan B available without prescription
Male Condom
UTI allergic reaction
1972
1990
2010’s
Diaphram Irritation, UTI toxic shock,
49,903
Patch
Margeret Sanger opens first birth control clinic-deemed a nuisance to society and sentenced to 30 days in jail
Contraception legalized for all US citizens by the supreme court
Gonorrhea
334,826
1,422,976
Bone loss, bleeding, nervousness
1916
Woman Everytime
Dart Magazine
3,621 out of 100,000
Ages 15-24
Chlamydia has the highest rates in the US.
Dart Magazine
Fall 2015 45
Amber Rose: A Feminist? By Tia Brown Layout by Olivia Bean
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Photo 1 by Anton Bielousov. Photo
mber Levonchuck also known as Amber Rose, is a 31-year-old American model, and self-proclaimed artist, fashion designer and actress. Unfortunately for her, what she is most known for is her relationships with various rap artists like Kanye West, and Wiz Khalifa (with whom she has a son). While it may seem as though she doesn’t have much of a claim to fame other than her relationships, Amber Rose also holds an attention-grabbing, yet controversial place as a voice in the feminist community. Rose speaks to women on college campuses and via social media, and recently published a book titled “How to be a Bad Bitch”. Rose has even hosted the “Amber Rose Slut Walk” and marched with women who wore lingerie, went topless, and wore clothing that spelled out offensive words such as “slut”, “whore” and “skank”. Her Slutwalk web page stated “We join the movement on this cause against sexual injustice, victim blaming, derogatory labeling and gender inequality.” Her point was to inspire and promote women’s rights and to acknowledge women victims of sexual abuse. Rose recently told Cosmopolitan magazine “I was always about girl power, but I didn’t quite get it because I did always feel like I had to be completely submissive to a man–I was always very unhappy doing that. I think I needed time to grow up.” Amber Rose has since used her 6 million+ followers on Instagram
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Fall 2015 47
acknowledge the “slut-shaming” and “body-shaming” she encountered during her everyday life. These are everyday issues that not only women in pop culture and media face, but also little girls on the playground and women in the workplace. According to Erika Vargas, MA Adolescent IOP Clinician at the Walden’s Braintree Clinic, “Body-shaming can lead to a vicious cycle of judgment and criticism. Messages from the media and from each other often imply that we should want to change, that we should care about looking slimmer, smaller, and tanner. And if we don’t, we worry that we are at risk of being the target of someone else’s bodyshaming comments.” Despite Amber Rose’s position of promoting women’s rights and empowering women, many professionals and feminist believe her actions go against feminist views. Kristen McHenry Women and Gender’s Studies professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth believes there are many different perspectives of feminism, but that Amber Rose embodies a very particular kind of feminist look. McHenry says, “I personally don’t want her representing feminism, but I like how
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she makes it accessible to people who may not have the chance to look at feminism in this way.” McHenry respects how personal Rose is when she speaks out about her experiences, for example, Rose never being hesitant to say that she danced for money when she was younger to survive, and never calling herself a victim. McHenry expressed how Rose not calling herself a victim is very powerful. Every movement, however, comes with people who disagree with the intention. Many people–especially women–were outraged about her Slut Walk and felt it was just another way for women to parade around naked. To them, her message relayed a counterproductive message on women’s empowerment to little girl’s. Naysayers believe she encourages young girls to lose self respect and lose self worth. Gabby Mooney an angry Facebooker wrote, “This #amberroseslutwalk is a shame. Instead of it being about defending rape victims ... it’s turned into these crazies wanting to be topless. So what they are saying is that we should all walk around naked and that’ll prevent rape? I’m sorry ... but I’m confused. Maybe we should teach boys to RESPECT women, instead of women degrading themselves?”
”
Top right photo by Mingle Media TV Bottom right photo by David Shankbone
“
I was always about girl power, but I didn’t quite get it because I did always feel like I had to be completely submissive to a man...
Fillette Lovaincy-Senior Women and Gender Studies major agrees and says, “I believe her intentions are there, but as far as her being successful in the feminist movement, she is not educated enough to educate others.” Miss Lovaincy says she would not want Amber Rose to be a leading example in the feminist movement because she may be able to speak on one specific topic but she’s not educated enough to speak on behalf of many topics involved in the feminist community. She expressed how she disliked how she makes it seem as though she began this feminist movement on her own. Miss Loviancy concluded by stating “Rose needs to educate herself about what has been done and what is being done. She is misinformed!” McHenry, agrees, emphasizing the one thing she disliked about Amber Rose’s feminism was her lack of credit to the original creator of the Slut Walk. According to the Huffington Post, the first Toronto Slut Walk was organized in 2011 after a police
officer in the town made the extremely controversial statement, saying “ women should avoid dressing like sluts in order to not be victimized.” This sparked outrage and provoked this iconic march. Organizer of the Slut Walk, Vera Kim Mikrut claimed the walk aimed to help victims find a voice and show that rape culture a real thing.” With many woman in the feminist movement frowning upon her actions, there is no denying that Rose has raised awareness and her own profile along with it. Andrea M. Moore psychology and sociology major with a minor in women and gender studies says she would respect and appreciate Amber Rose being a spokesperson for the third wave of the feminist movement . Miss Moore says “there are many women who are like her who can relate to her story.” She expressed that Amber Rose helps everyday women with everyday issues, and for that reason Rose deserves a place in the feminist movement. d
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Fall 2015 49
Transform the Look 1.
5 Affordable Eye Shadow Palettes For Day to Night
1.
Iconic 2 Redemption Eyeshadow Palette - $7.00 This palette comes with 12 amazing shades at a reasonable price. The redemption palette comes with a selection of shimmers and matte colored shadows that can be mixed and matched.
2.
60 Color BH Day & Night Palette- $10.00 For such a great price with this pallet you get 60 vibrant colors to mix and match. The colors range from the lightest of pinks to the darkest of blacks, which are great to turn a day eye into a night eye. This palette is great for beginners to practice multiple looks.
3.
e.l.f. Studio Mad for Matte Eyeshadow Palette - $10.00 This palette contains 10 matte eye shadows and is great for those who may like a simpler look during the day and transition to a bolder look at night. These shadows can be used wet for vibrant color, or dry dry for easy bendability.
4.
NYX Los Angeles Palette - $20.00 A 10 shadow palette inspired by LA street artist, Hueman. Each shade is reminiscent of the LA lifestyle with names like “Celebrity,” “Sunset Strip,” and “Road Rage.”
5.
Sephora Collection Colorful 5- $25.00 The 5 color and twelve shade palette can be mixed and matched. This particular palette comes with eye shadow applicator and a mirror, making it easy to take on the go.
By Marissa Sneed Layout by Olivia Bean
Follow Steps listed to the left.
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Day Look Take your index finger and measure out a small amount of eyeshadow primer onto your finger. Just enough for one eyelid. Tip: Any eye shadow primer can be used
2.
Apply eyeshadow primer onto the top eyelid and rub in until the primer is translucent, so that you can’t see it. Tip: Primer can also be used to make eyebrow filling last longer
3.
Apply one of the lighter shadows to the entire lid of the eye using a medium sized shadow brush. Any of the first two shades of any of the palettes will work. Tip: Use a shadow color one shade lighter than the skin of your eyelid for a more natural look.
4.
Apply a small amount of primer to the lower lid, just enough so it does not clump together and will spread evenly and flat. Tip: When you look at your eyelid you can break it up into two parts: above the crease and below the crease. Additional primer should be placed below the crease on the lower lid.
5.
For a more vibrant color, take a small shadow brush and apply any one of the middle shades to the lower lid on top of the primer. The shade you choose is dependent upon what is appropriate for the occasion. Tip: Tap the end of the brush lightly to avoid any fallout from the shadow.
6.
Transformation for Night Look Using a crease brush apply any of the dark shades to the outer crease toward the brow bone (not too dark) and blend until application is smooth. This will give a smokey eye effect. Use lighter colors for a softer look or bright colors to stand out.
Photo on Flikr by: Tim Baird
By Amanda Ormseth Layout by Olivia Bean
UBER
I remember the first time I heard the word Uber and was extremely annoyed that I had no idea what people were talking about. A few scrolls down UrbanDictionary.com later and I learned that the term referred to not only “above all, the best, top, something that nothing is better than” as in “über-cool” but that it was also a new... driving service? Uber bills itself as something of a futuristic and democratized taxi service that you can access by way of an application available to any iOS, Android or Windows phone that can connect riders and drivers using their GPS location. I got to talk to a student who drives for Uber in his spare time. During the school year Juan Marte would drive back to his hometown in Boston to give rides. I asked Juan some basic questions about Uber and how he got into it. Like most great things, he heard about it on Facebook. “A good friend of mine had shared a BusinessInsider article that talked about the success of Uber and how it has gained popular demand over Taxis. I decided to sign up to be a driver because at the time I was living off-campus and I needed extra money to cover my rent and tuition cost.” After graduation last May, Juan hasn’t yet been able to find a job in his field (shocker!) so Uber keeps him not only busy but supported. Juan is confident that when he does find his new
career, Uber won’t interfere because there are no set hours. “If I did have another job it would not interfere because of the high flexibility. With Uber you can sign in or out of driving mode any time you want. There are no driving schedules you need to follow or minimum hours per day or week set.” To me, it seemed a little odd that just anyone can be an Uber driver. Juan says you have to have a background check and be at least 21 with a license and registered vehicle. Because of these minimal requirements, it’s very easy to obtain a driving job. While Uber has taken the nation by storm, long time taxi drivers are understandably angered by their sudden success. According to Shmoop, most taxi drivers lease their cab from a cab company. The lease includes insurance, communication equipment, and maintenance on the car. Taxi drivers have to obtain certain licenses to drive these cars, have some training, be screened for criminal records and they pay fines when they break driving rules as well as taxi business rules. Places like London even require you to apprentice for up to three years before obtaining a taxi license. Depending on the cab company and state, training of the geography, meter mechanics, and how to complete paperwork may be required of a taxi driver. Some cities even have taxi cab commissions that set rates and requirements for drivers which could include an English proficiency test,
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arrive. Perhaps one of the largest concerns for someone ordering a taxi is the issue of when it will arrive; this is eliminated because the GPS allows both parties to see each other’s locations thus knowing exactly where your driver is. Another frustration with cab rides has been the exchange of money. It’s not only awkward, wondering how much to tip, it’s inconvenient due to its traditional cash-only method. Uber again eliminates this problem by charging the customer’s credit card over the app. Although there are other riding services out there like Lyft, Sidecar and Zipcar, Uber surpasses these competitions by being available in 58 countries worldwide and 300 cities. Also, depending on availability, Uber offers several different levels of service. Uber drivers rely on the app as referrals for their service, “With the Uber app you can also rate your driver so in the case of a bad or good ride you can give feedback and the company can take action if needed. Since that system is in place I feel like most drivers are on their best behavior.” The better the rating, means better benefits for the drivers, and of course more riders! The drivers can rate the customers too; in case of a douchebag customer they can be deemed not allowed to ride Ubers. Respectively, taxi drivers are frustrated that Uber basically came out of nowhere and started picking up their passengers. Although taxi drivers have sustained 52
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their position in the driving world for many years, it is no secret they are outdated. Since there has never been any competition, taxi companies have been allowed to get away with being behind the times. If they want to have any competition with ride sharing apps like Uber, they need to learn how to market in the digital world because location-based apps are here to stay. Things like Uber have made our time-sensitive society more efficient and if taxi drivers want to compete they must offer superior service, better security, and fairer pricing. This is from Uber’s website on being a driver: “Make good money; drive when you want; no office, no boss.” While Uber seems like a genius way to get home after a night of drinking, it also appears to be an awesome alternative for some extra cash while in school. Where most jobs have a grueling interview process or inflexible hours students can’t work around, Uber could be your ride to success, literally. ordering a taxi is the issue of when it will arrive; this is eliminated because the GPS allows both parties to see each other’s locations thus knowing exactly where your driver is. Another frustration with cab rides has been the exchange of money. It’s not only awkward, wondering how much to tip, it’s inconvenient due to its traditional cash-only method. Uber again eliminates this problem by charging the customer’s credit card over the app. I got to talk to a student who drives for Uber in his spare time. During the school year Juan Marte would drive back to his hometown in Boston to give rides. I asked Juan some basic questions about Uber and how he got into it. Like most great things, he heard about it on Facebook. “A good friend of mine had shared a BusinessInsider article that talked about the success of Uber and how it has gained popular demand over Taxis. I decided to sign up to be a driver because at the time I was living off-campus and I needed extra money to cover my rent and tuition cost.” After graduation last May, Juan hasn’t yet been able to find a job in his field (shocker!) so Uber keeps him not only busy but supported. Juan is confident that when he does find his new career, Uber won’t interfere because there are no set hours. “If I did have another job it would not interfere because of the high flexibility. With Uber you can sign in or out of driving mode any time you want. There are no driving schedules you need to follow or minimum hours per day or week set.” To me, it seemed a little odd that just anyone can be an Uber driver. Juan says you have to have a background check and be at least 21 with a license and registered vehicle. However, because of these minimal requirements, it’s very easy to obtain a driving job. Although there are other riding services out there like Lyft, Sidecar and Zipcar, Uber surpasses these competitions by being available in 58 countries worldwide and 300 cities. Also, depending on availability, Uber offers several different levels of service.
Photo on Flikr by: Kevin Marsch
80 hours of classroom instruction and a driving test. Because many taxi drivers own their car they can set their own hours and avoid lease fees, much like Uber. However, they are still responsible for obtaining a business permit and getting the right insurance. Cities like NYC, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco require taxi drivers to purchase a “medallion.” Medallions allow taxi drivers to simply pick up passengers on the street rather than having to be dispatched from the cab company. Medallions can cost around $150k and for this reason many rely on simply leasing their taxis. According to Juan, the main draw of Uber is the convenience of knowing when your ride is going to
According to Juan, though, the main draw of Uber is the convenience of knowing when your ride is going to arrive. “With the Uber app you can also rate your driver so in the case of a bad or good ride you can give feedback and the company can take action if needed. Since that system is in place I feel like most drivers are on their best behavior.” Uber drivers also rely on the app as referrals for their service. The better the rating, means better benefits for the drivers, and of course more riders! The drivers can rate the customers too; in case of a douchebag customer they can be deemed not allowed to ride Ubers. This is from Uber’s website on being a driver: “Make good money; drive when you want; no office, no boss.” While Uber seems like a genius way to get home after a night of drinking, it also appears to be an awesome alternative for some extra cash while in school. Where most jobs have a grueling interview process or inflexible hours students can’t work around, Uber could be your ride to success, literally. According to Shmoop, most taxi drivers lease their cab from a cab company. The lease includes insurance, communication equipment, and maintenance on the car. Taxi drivers have to obtain certain licenses to drive these cars, have some training, be screened for criminal records and they pay fines when they break driving rules as well as taxi business rules. Places like London even require you to apprentice for up to three years before obtaining a taxi license. Depending on the cab company and state, training of the geography, meter mechanics, and how to complete paperwork may be required of a taxi driver. Some cities even have taxi cab commissions that set rates and requirements for drivers which could include an English proficiency test, 80 hours of classroom instruction and a driving test. While many taxi drivers own their own car, much like Uber, they can set their own hours and avoid lease
UBER FARES Photo on Flikr by: Helgi Bragason
UBERTAXI: Use Uber to request and pay for a taxi, at standard taxi meter rates plus a $1 booking fee. A 20% gratuity is automatically added for the driver by default.
fees; however, they are still responsible for obtaining a business permit and getting the right insurance. Cities like NYC, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco require taxi drivers to purchase a “medallion.” Medallions allow taxi drivers to simply pick up passengers on the
street rather than having to be dispatched from the cab company. Medallions can cost around $150k and for this reason many rely on leasing their taxis. Respectively, taxi drivers are angered by Uber because they basically came out of nowhere and started picking up their passengers. Although taxi drivers have sustained their position in the driving world for many years, it is no secret they are outdated. Since there has never been any competition, taxi companies have been allowed to get away with being behind the times. If they want to have any competition with ride sharing apps like Uber, they need to start educating themselves and learn how to market in the digital world because location-based apps are here to stay. Things like Uber have made our time-sensitive society more efficient and if taxi drivers want to compete they must offer superior service, better security, and fairer pricing. d
BOSTON
LOS ANGE L E S
NE W Y OR K CITY
UBERX: $2, $0.16/min, $1.24/mile
UBERX: $0, $0.18/min, $1/mile
UBERX: $3, $0.40/min, $2.15/mile
UBER XL: $3.50, $0.35/min, $2.45/mile
UBER XL: $3, $0.35/min, $1.85/mile
UBER XL: $4.50, $0.60/min, $3.25/mile
UBERBLACK: $7, $0.45/min, $3.95/mile
UBERBLACK: $5, $0.40/min, $2.35/mile
UBERBLACK: $7, $0.65/min, $3.75/mile
UBERSUV UBER FOR EVERYONE: $14, $0.50/min, 4.30/mile
UBERSUV UBER FOR EVERYONE: $15, $0.55/min, $4.25/mile
UBERSUV UBER FOR EVERYONE: $14, $0.80/min, $4.50/mile
UBERLUX: $20, $0.60/min, $5/mile
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Fall 2015 53
How to Survive a 1
Eat a solid meal before going out, like dinner, not a snack, or a few chips.
2
3
5
8
Night Out
Never mix drinks. That is a recipe for disaster and throwing up.
When you think “maybe I should go home soon”… GO HOME, because the next thing you know you are being kicked out of the bar by bouncers as closing time approaches.
6
9 10
13
4
Take lots of photos because not only will it be fun to look at, but it will also help you piece together the events from the night before if you can’t remember. Ladies, never wear heels, unless it is a really fancy club where they are required. Odds are you will be standing all night.
Don’t drunk text! You will most likely embarrass yourself, which leads me to #7
54
Don’t give out your credit card to buy everyone a round of drinks. You know the next morning when you look at your bank account in tears you will regret it…which brings me to #11
11
Leave your credit cards at home, bring cash that way you don’t spend more than you want to.
12
If you are a girl, always bring a hair elastic, you are going to get hot and want to put your hair up.
Try not to wear light colored shirts, because odds are you or someone else will spill a drink on you, plus those sweat stains wont be attractive either. Fall 2015
Dart Magazine
7
Delete the phone numbers of people that you are most likely to drunk text, so when you have the urge to do so you physically can’t.
If it is not summer, definitely wear a jacket. I know now it probably ruins your outfit, but you will regret that decision when you leave the bar at 3 A.M. and the temperature has drop 20 degrees.
14 15
If you have to pee, go to the bathroom. No matter how drunk you are there is one loyal, more sober friend that will help you on your travels.
Drink an entire water bottle before you go to bed and your next morning won’t as excruciating as it should be.
Make sure you tip the bartender. If you want to continue getting good drinks, give them a dollar tip for each beverage and they will reward you handsomely.
16
And always plan ahead. You don’t want to be walking around not knowing which bar to go to, who’s driving home, if you need a cab, or if you are sleeping out. Planning ahead is the key to a successful night out.
LGBT on TV
The Slow Climb Up the Representation Ladder By Cassandra Raposo
D
Layout by Megan Pereen
o you remember the first LGBT character you saw on TV? For me, it was Jack McFarland from the NBC comedy Will & Grace. I didn’t watch the show myself, but my parents did and I caught a few episodes once in a while. Although, at the time, I didn’t realize what a big deal it was to see a gay character on a TV, the show was following in the footsteps of many recent firsts with regard to homosexual characters. The first gay character to appear on American television was in the 1972 TV-movie, That Certain Summer, in which Martin Sheen and Hal Holbrook played lovers in the ABC Movie of the Week. The movie, however, was more about the son of Holbrook’s character, who found out about his father’s sexuality and ran away (a rather inauspicious debut for gays on TV). The first recurring TV series to feature gay characters was Hot L Baltimore in 1975. The first kiss between a same-sex couple aired on L.A. Law in 1991, while Buffy the Vampire Slayer debuted the first full-blown lesbian relationship in 2001. Just last year we saw yet another first on a show on Nickelodeon called The Legend of Korra, which ended on a note that suggested a romantic
relationship between two female characters, marking the first time that a children’s show has ever come close to featuring a same-sex couple and a bisexual character. Surprisingly, trans actors have never been in higher demand than they are today. Scripted shows such as Orange is the New Black (2013), The Fosters (2013), Transparent (2014), and Sense8 (2015) have shown that TV programs can be both groundbreaking and successful. Reality TV shows such as Becoming Us, I Am Jazz, and I Am Cait have shown that this year in particular has brought a lot of interest in trans-persons. If you look at who is being represented in these TV shows, you might notice that Becoming Us and Transparent are both about a white trans woman who comes out later in life, after she has married and had children, and her family learns to deal with it. You also might notice that this is a parallel narrative to the real-life transformation Caitlyn Jenner. Of course the main difference between Jenner’s journey and the journeys of the trans characters in Becoming Us and Transparent is that Jenner is incredibly famous. Her transition has been highly publicized since she came out Dart Magazine
Fall 2015 55
representation matters just as much – or sometimes more than – the quantity. The problem is that bisexual characters are often written as harmful tropes. There’s the hypersexual bisexual who is all about sex all the time; the selfdestructive bisexual whose sexuality is just another way to get themselves into trouble; the scared-of-commitment bisexual who can’t seem to form genuine relationships; and the unfaithful bisexual who is extremely prone to cheating on their partner. Moreover, we often see gender-specific misrepresentation of bisexuals. If the character is a woman, she is treated as someone who is just experimenting, or merely going through a phase. Once she finds a man to settle down with, her bisexuality will just go away. On the other hand, if it’s a bisexual man, he is treated as someone who is secretly gay. He is hiding his real sexuality from the public. Amy Zimmerman in a recent Daily Beast article wrote, “While male bisexuality is routinely dismissed as a tool, an indulgence, or a fallacy, female bisexuality is almost exclusively trotted out to fulfill a male fantasy…It Ain’t Easy Being Bisexual on TV.” Either way, bisexual characters are often made out to be untrustworthy. Something that many people in the LGBT community strive for is visibility. A 2010 CBS News poll revealed that knowing a gay or lesbian person increases the likeliness
“It is much easier for LGBT actors to find roles that embody their own
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“Caitlyn-Jenner” photo from Flicker user Alberto Frank
in her interview with Diane Sawyer in April of 2015. When Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover was released, debuting herself as Caitlyn for the first time, it was received with a media frenzy making headlines on blogs, magazines, radio station, and news networks around the world. As a result, Jenner received a lot of support from other LGBT community members and non-LGBT members alike. In her interview with Vanity Fair, Jenner said that “the reaction was absolutely amazing” and she “[gets] letters every day from all of these people all over the world,” especially other trans women. Unlike transgender characters, which are at an alltime high, the amount of bisexual characters on TV has actually decreased from 22% of all LGBT characters on broadcast television in 2013 to 18% in the 2014-2015 season, according to a “Where We Are on TV” report done by GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation). It is a small decrease, admittedly, but when compared to the number of gay male characters, who make up 54% of the LGBT characters on broadcast TV, you might notice that there is a great disparity. You might have also noticed that I named Jack McFarland and not Will & Grace’s other main gay character, Will Truman, as the first of my recollection. The reason is one that still pervades LGBT characters on television: stereotypes. The character of Jack, played by Sean Hayes, is in the familiar mold of the flamboyant, feminine, eccentric gay friend while Will, played by Eric McCormack, is his opposite: a somewhat stuffy, non-lisping, and restrained lawyer. Bisexual characters (if visible at all) have their own stereotypes and are often played as loose or confused. And even worse, transgender characters have often been the punch lines of jokes. While it is a testament to our increasingly tolerant society that bisexual characters even exist at all, we must remember that the quality of the
of having a positive opinion on homosexuality. In that survey, of the Americans who said that they don’t believe homosexuality is wrong, 32% said that they didn’t know a gay or lesbian person, while 53% said that they did. This suggests that the presence of out-people in our lives increases our tolerance of LGBT people. In the case of television, increasing visibility means increasing the amount of LGBT characters in recurring roles. There is special attention given to bisexual characters because they are less visible than lesbian and gay characters, as proven by the GLAAD report. In fact, they don’t just happen to be invisible – they are actively erased. “Bisexual erasure… on film and television highlights the way that certain types of queerness are undermined and erased in popular narratives, while others are increasingly caricaturized and/or celebrated,” says Zimmerman. The inaccuracies in representation often paint bisexual characters as confused, lying, and/or morally flexible. But when bisexual characters are accurately (or at least less stereotypically) portrayed, they aren’t referred to as bisexual. For example, the showrunner of House of Cards says that Frank Underwood is “a man with a large [sexual] appetite.” Piper Chapman,
from Orange is the New Black, calls herself a “former lesbian.” Blaine Anderson, from Glee, said that “bisexual is a term gay guys use in high school when they want to hold hands with girls and feel normal for a change.” You know there’s a huge problem when Glee, the TV show that prided itself for being all-inclusive and all-accepting, elides bisexuality, too. When the majority of we see on TV are LGBT clichés, this serves to reproduce social inequality in real life. Take typecasting, for example. It is much easier for LGBT actors to find roles that embody their own stereotypes rather than three-dimensional characters whose defining characteristic cannot be described by their sexuality or gender identity. According to Dr. Juli Parker, director of UMD’s Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality, “part of the reason you also don’t see representation in Hollywood is because there are all these gay actors who don’t feel like they can be out.” The best thing that we can do now is to look to the future. There is already hope on the horizon! The lead character of the CW show, The 100, named Clarke Griffin, was just revealed to be bisexual last season. Laverne Cox was cast in an upcoming CBS show, Doubt, as a lawyer – the first series regular character to be played by a transgender actress on broadcast TV. If we show that we want roles like these, they will be written, and TV will be better for it. d
“will and Grace Motive” by Kadykianus
“You know there’s a huge problem when Glee, the TV show that prided itself for being all-inclusive and allaccepting, elides bisexuality, too. “
stereotypes rather than three-dimensional characters whose defining characteristic cannot be described by their sexuality or gender identity.” Dart Magazine
Fall 2015 57
UMass Dartmouth
NK
WRITE
THI
R
D A E
ENGLISH E T EA
CR
http://www.umassd.edu/cas/english/