MOVES MAGAZINE 2021 SUMMER ISSUE

li fest yle fo r cit y w o m e n s u m m e r 202 1

‘top ten’ movie directors GI ACOMO GI A N I O T TI

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G ia c o m o G i a n n i ot t i

By Sarah Rhodes photography:Jonny Marlow

is h t ve ese a h to all th y a w et t g a e u o gr Y . a en ction e b a s o a t h l ia a cal d e m for l a i c ..” ce . o s n s i e . “.. refer er it f ev t o a t in e, wh o p g onat n i az le, d m a emb ss a o et l p o pe

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Actor Giacomo Gianniotti doesn’t see his last name as super sexy and I’m here to tell him, “Why yes, it is.“ He appreciates it more but there was a time that was not so. “When I was a young kid having moved from Italy to a small town in Canada, where everyone was like ‘Bill’ and ‘Bob’ and ‘Josh’ and ‘Nathan’, I wasnt so much a fan of it, but now as an adult I very much appreciate my name and my culture.”

Gianniotti has a very busy lifestyle. He just got back from Italy, pre-production for a project he’s going to be working on in the fall so he was doing some tests over there. COVID prevented him from seeing his family—two years to be exact—so it was so euphoric to touch roots again and hug his grandmother in the place that he is from. Gianniotti was born in Rome and then his parents split up and they moved to Toronto. He went to high school at Cardinal Carter Academy for the Arts and at 18 left that behind to study and work in Rome then moved back to Canada and graduated from Humber College’s Theatre Program and completed an actor’s residency at Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre in Toronto.. After a couple of years working as an actor in Canada, he wanted to explore different options so he moved to Los Angeles.

For the past seven seasons Gianniotti has played Dr. Andrew DeLuca on Grey’s Anatomy. He also voiced the character Giacomo in Disney Pixar’s Luca, a film Giannotti is extremely proud of given his Italian heritage. Other voices include comedian/actor Jim Gaffigan and Saturday Night Live alum Maya Rudolph. Luca premiered at the Aquarium of Genoa in June and was released direct-to-streaming on Disney+.

three million followers, I can actually ring that dinner bell you can translate that into thousands of dollars of donations to charities and stuff...” ..

“It’s Pixar’s first sort of attempt at Italian culture and because we had a real Italian director, Enrico Casarosa, it went past the mark. As a true Italian I am so proud of the film, because it could have easily gone into stereotypes and things but it didn’t, it was authentic. I brought some of my oldest Italian friends to go see it and they loved it! They felt at home, they felt like children again. It’s just about being young, being a child, and having an amazing summer where you build great friendships and eat great food and you just start to discover things about yourself.

So yeah it was a very, very special film.”

Grey’s has played a really big part in Gianniotti’s life, seven seasons ending for him this year. Once he landed the role, his life immediately changed. It has made him humble wherever he is in his life. He started the show as a guest star and only had two episodes at the end of the 11th season. And it wasn’t until the following year’s next season that he was invited back. Even then he would just do a guest appearance and they kept asking him to come back and then they proposed he be a regular on the show and join the cast full-time. In that moment his life changed. “I’ve never really been on something for so long and I remember very specifically, Debbie Allen [co-star and executive producer on the show] walking up to me and saying, ‘Honey, you’re on the show now, you live here, you have to go get an apartment and I was like oh okay.”

Like any doctor with a good bedside manner, his personality is to always give back, pay it forward. Gianniotti uses his social media presence (2.9 million followers on Instagram alone) to turn fame into charitable dollars. “I think I’ve been doing stuff like this my whole life but when you don’t have a following of a million people and you sort of ring the dinner bell and say ‘Hey can you guys help me out’ it’s like two or three people come.

But when you have three million followers, I can actually ring that dinner bell and I can translate that into thousands of dollars of donations to charities and stuff. I mean God if that’s not what it is for then I don’t know what is. For a lot of celebrities and a lot of people, social media has been a great way to have this amazing point of reference for a call to action. You get all these people to assemble, donate, whatever it is.”

Gianniotti works with the organization All Hands And Hearts, and they do disaster relief all over the world. They stay long well after the disaster happens to help that community rebuild.

“What they always tell me is when it happens the media does their job, you get it on every TV, every radio. There’s been a hurricane here and we all know about it, but then after that two to three day period, it is forgotten and we are onto the next thing and those people all still need help. And that’s another thing; I think attention is so hard to gain today.”

What he will miss most about Grey’s is the important storytelling, the one constant thing that Grey’s has done so well since the beginning and that is just giving a voice to the voiceless and shedding light on things that people don’t talk about enough. Grey’s has

done a remarkable job at educating people and addressing these issues. One such episode dealt with human trafficking and it absolutely moved Gianniotti.

“That was really powerful for me as an actor to go down that journey and talk about that subject matter. But much more so on a deeper level knowing that we were shedding light on an issue that was very important and that millions of people worldwide were going to see this. It might even have saved a life or prompted a woman who was in danger to seek help, like those are the things that for me are way gratifying and remarkable. Because you know those aren’t things that you think of when you’re like I want to become an actor.

Those aren’t the things you’re thinking of that will give you great gratification. You’re thinking of the applause. You know you don’t think the story you’re telling can have an impact on someone’s life and these are things that you find out later. That’s one of the things I am

Stylist: Adam Ballheim Grooming: Nichole Gianniotti going to miss most about being on Grey’s is being a part of shedding light on all these really important topics.”

For now, Gianniotti has a number of irons in the fire just waiting to be taken out and used. He has a film in the very early stages of production and trying to get made and will actually take place in Italy. “I also have a project which I unfortunately can’t talk about but that will also be in Italy as well. It’s going to be an Italian project, where I will be acting in Italian. So that’s something that Italy fans can look forward to.”

A dream project? “[Working with] Clint Eastwood. I could just cry thinking about that because I am just such a fan of his. Not just as a filmmaker but I can only imagine what he gives you as an actor, having been an actor for so long and doing the films that he did as an actor. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be directed by him. What kind of things that he would give you, and conversations he would want to have with you about the character. I’m sad he isn’t going to be making movies anymore.”

006 profile giacomo gianiotti contents

018 cheers prosecco 022 feature against empathy 026 feature foreclosure 030 feature homme improvement 034 feature honor killings 036 profile estefan’s red table 044 feature kids in america 048 cover story stephanie beatriz 062 event picnic on the hudson 066 feature moves mentors

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YOUR HISTORY WILL BUILD OUR FUTURE

“...She walked up to me and she asked me to dance bitch

I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said, “Lola” L-O-L-A Lola, lo lo lo lo Lola...”

“...Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world Except for Lola Lo lo lo lo Lola... “ Ray Davies

What I truly hate about relationships is not about the relationship itself; it’s the gender role expectations people have about relationships. It’s the idea that men are always one way while women are the other, that men are lazy and women are controlling, that women want to go dancing while men want to play golf. In every relationship every gender stereotype is challenged. Men often want a traditional wedding, while women would prefer to quietly get hitched at Town Hall.

When looking at an apartment recently a realtor mockingly said about an enormous walk-in closet, “But where will your boyfriend keep his stuff?”

I promptly corrected him that my boyfriend is the shopper among us and proceeded to roll my eyes. With the constant divides pop culture encourages between men and women, why do people continue to perpetuate such stereotypes?

In a relationship especially, people presuppose a boyfriend is one way while the girlfriend is the exact other, and that they resent each other because of it. In GLBT couples there’s an assumption that there is always both a “masculine” and a “feminine” presence that makes up the couple.

But why haven’t people figured out we’re all some of each?

there are things you only learn on the inside. I was brought up by a front-line fighter in the battle over keeping abortion clinics open with about 5 of my formative years spent working intermittently at various locations. Among other duties I spent hours standing outside of the door in a green vest, a beacon of protection to women scurrying in for procedures. I memorized the birth control chart we had on the bathroom walls. One thing that became more commonplace toward the end of my stint there was the decreasing age, of girls stopping by to procure birth control. It was more surprising every time. The trepidation with which a 13-year-old would ask if we had to tell her mom about this was one of the most touching moments of my job. I wanted to hug and slap her every time. Hug because she was taking control of her life and health. Slap because she scared me, with her barely pubescent acknowledgement of sex. Saying abortion still feels like increasing the electricity coursing through the air. Perhaps on a nationwide level the discussion has been relegated to the back burner due to economic uncertainties but GOPers are still obsessed with our over-sexualized, cell-phone talking girls who are growing up too fast; never mind what their male counterparts are doing, it’s these young sluts who will be our destruction.

However readily accessible conversations about serious issues facing women is never a bad thing.

Though abortion took up thousands of hours of my family’s time, it also prepared me so strongly for a life open to discussion and debate of any difficult issue.

Prehistoric Man...ners

I was on the subway the other day and heard a man talking about how some girl he catcalled had been angry about it. He was describing how this is one of the only countries where a woman can get away with treating a man like that; that in most societies, like his native one (though he spoke with a Queens accent), she’d be beaten into respecting him. The funny part is that I wanted to say something, but there’s no telling how crazy this man is, and I had to keep my mouth shut – ironic on so many levels.

Jaymie, office coordinator, Flatiron

Crawford, restaurant management, SoHo Canine Controllers Dogs have sharp teeth. Obvious, you might think, negligible even. I see dogs all the time—on the streets, in my dreams. And that’s never a numb fact. It’s hard to smile at a charming German shepherd as I eye his salivating maw. Can’t you understand that, Lady in Bloomingdales, who tells her doggie to “come to Mommy” and glares at my fearful face and scoffs when I take a detour? What, like I need to walk around with a sign stating my absolute horror? I won’t! Because, rather than advertise it, I want to undermine it.

Kind owners, will you help a girl out? Before I take the matter into my own hands, literally!

Ade, circus act, Jersey City

Jamie, club security, downtown Getta Grip Basic Instinct...

There are pieces of a baby doll covered in blood in a plastic bag on my parent’s fridge alongside a mock music video set to a Dylan song that prominently features my mother and her cohorts talking on those 3 inch thick prehistoric cell phones about clinic protection. Abortion is not a new topic, nor is it particularly interesting to people who have spent years so intimately married to their stance on it. However, like any field,

I love the dating scene in NYC. It is truly the only place in the world where a woman can be strikingly beautiful, super-successful, perfectly dressed, and witty . . . and still obsess over how many hours it took some guy to text her back and whether or not his abbreviations for words like “u” indicate his complete nonchalance or his wellconcealed interest. - Megan, retail sales, UES [Luckily, NYC is also the birthplace of such sayings-turned-books like “He’s just not that into you”

Hey Good Lookin’ Attractive people, men and women, tend to travel in packs. Attractive friends, often have attractive siblings. Every so often, those good looking genes skip a generation, but for the most part, mother nature is good and just. But what are the rules on dating or sleeping with a friend’s sibling or a sibling’s friend--are they off limits or are they fair game? Normally, it’s “Back the fuck up.” But now and then, there are these occasions that warrant revisiting the original friend clauses you signed when your friendship first began. Situa-

“ ... There is evidence that painted lips, crimson in particular, capture male attention... ” tions get so sticky (pun intended) that you have to mentally lawyer up to prevent instant physical repercussions.

Tom, electrical engineer, LIC

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall It’s super hard dating someone when you’re a complete narcissist. I didn’t realize I was until recently I went on a date and forget shortly thereafter what the guy looked like. Sure, I remember laughing and drinking, but mostly I remember talking about myself and being hilarious. Which is horrifying. Surely this man had something to contribute, but I was on a roll with my one woman show and wouldn’t be stopped. Can someone please find me someone as funny as I am to get

out lipstick. Red is my favorite and my go-to, but I also dabble in shades of pink and hues of purple.

Why do I wear lipstick? To feel empowered, to feel sexy, to feel beautiful and to feel like me. I always feel a little brighter, a littler prettier, a little more ready to take on the day with my lips painted.

Interestingly enough, historical female Aigures received scrutiny for wearing lipstick. Examples include Queen Elizabeth I (known, of course, as the Virgin Queen) and Catherine the Great of Russia.

Ironically, both women wore makeup as a way to showcase their power and independence; yet, it only proved to give them reputations involving sex and scandal. Society (men, cough cough) really will slut-shame a woman for anything she does, whether it’s today or 500 years ago.

Why do women wear lipstick—to look attractive, to moisturize their lips, and to draw attention to their mouths. Of course, the aforementioned theory that women play up their lips with lipstick in an effort to draw attention to their labia, or vaginal lips. I’ve never intentionally put on lipstick with this correlation in mind, but I have worn and do wear lipstick to look and feel sexy in the hopes of attracting attention from the opposite sex. I guess the world makes sense again.

looking at red lips, compared to 6.7 for pink and only 0.95 on eyes. Consciously or subconsciously, red lips attract men.

It is no wonder that facial lips parallel those of the vagina. These pairs of lips are not the only body parts that correlate to one another. There is a theory that cleavage mimics buttocks, which is an animal signal for sex. So, men think tits, ass, sex... shocker.

Women have been wearing constricting clothing for centuries to make their waists look smaller.

Can you say corsets? They pull in your waist, while accentuating her breasts and buttocks. Corsets are a woman’s best friend. Literally. Getting into one can be a bitch, but once in, the effects are pretty damn amazing. Women use corsets or other constrictors to make themselves attractive to men, just as they wear make-up, speciAically lipstick.

On a primal level, small waists and full breasts convey fertility. In prehistoric times, men chose women based off of how fertile they appeared and women chose men based on how strong they looked and able to protect their family. We might be more evolved today than cavemen, but we are still visual sexual creatures. Put on a corset and some red lipstick and you’ll feel like a million bucks.

Eloise, writer, Washington Heights

me out of my own head? Or really, just tell me how to score a second date, because people seem to fucking hate me.

Maxine, publishing, UWS “ . . . Do Your Squats, Eat Your Veggies, Put On Red Lipstick... And Don’t Let The Boys Be Mean To You...”

Did you know that lipstick is a staple for most women, whether they’re going to work or out on a date. Women lick their lips, and gloss and paint them in order to attract sexual attention. Whether or not women are conscious of it, they wear lipstick to attract men...down there. I know I do. Red lipstick is a timeless accessory for any female. It’s bold, empowering and sexy.

If you were asked to think about women and make up, I bet lipstick would be the Airst thing that comes to their mind. Women, even at a young age, go for lipstick. They want to be like Mommy, so they smear lipstick all over their little faces and shufAle around in Mommy’s high heels. There is a photo of me -- no more than four of Aive -- smirking and striking a pose, hot pink lipstick all over the lower half of my face. I did want to be just like Mommy. I wanted to be beautiful and grown up.

Today, at 22, I almost never leave the house with-

Vaginal lips are in proportion to the thickness of her facial lips. When aroused, a woman’s lips, breasts and genitals enlarge and become redder due to a rush of blood flow, which could explain why red lips are such a symbol for sex appeal: they mimic this quite pleasant side effect.

There is evidence that painted lips, crimson in particular, capture male attention. According to a study done at Manchester University, red lipstick draws heterosexual males’ attention. When shown photographs for ten seconds of women wearing various colors of lipstick, men spent 7.3 seconds

Professor Higgins, I Presume?

I was recently asked if I spoke English. Really?

Do I look THAT foreign to you? I understand that you’re Caucasian. You’re tall, but you’re aging. Your tweed suit is from Saks Fifth Avenue and you’re a chemistry teacher. Oh sorry, I mean Professor. So Professor, sweet and city-savvy, cultured, Professor. You must have seen an Asian girl in your lifetime. There are a billion of us around, so you had to have seen one. And odds are, that one spoke and understood English too. My advice to you is this: next time you want to ask me an ignorant question without a legitimate reason to inquire in the first place, keep in mind that we’re in New York, we’re in a college classroom, and my last name is Johnson.

Read: I’m half Caucasian. So, my answer is Yes, I do in fact speak English… now, please stick to the curriculum. Social grace obviously isn’t your forte.

Jo, pr, Staten Island

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cheers

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Those lazy, sexy days of summer are upon us, and daytime libations are the socially acceptable order of the day. We day-drink because it’s fun; we do it to celebrate the warm weather (much more appealing than grey winter days) and, lets be honest, to flirt. However since drinking before 3 p.m. might just threaten impropriety, our choices must maintain that oh-so delicate balance between class and downright debauchery. So let’s raise a glass (or two) of a fine, summery Prosecco, a light Italian sparkling wine which also happens to be surrounded with trendy, hip connotations.

Usually made from 100% Glera grapes, Prosecco has a nice, clean, smooth effervescence with simple notes and an intense aroma. It is obviously not Champagne, which usually has more complex notes and larger bubbles, but a more flippant alternative to the French version which, lets face it, has a stuffier ring about it. Nowadays, there’s even a new line of Prosecco on tap that stays fresh longer, making it more environmentally sustainable than ever before. As could probably go without saying, eco-friendly is very ‘in’ right now. Prosecco’s smaller bubbles keep it lighter and more enjoyable for an afternoon drink. It also makes it easier to pair with food, as it doesn’t battle or clash with flavor.

Because of its fine carbonation, Prosecco must be enjoyed while it is extremely fresh and crisp. Pour from a bottle and enjoy the same day, because if left opened overnight it will be disgusting and flat when you need it next day. This is one of the main perks of getting Prosecco on tap. It is guaranteed to stay fresh for 65 days. 65 days!

Even though the environmental upside* of—well, anything—is very trendy at the moment, places with Prosecco on tap are more so. In NYC, they are all hip, well-decorated, upscale, and for a younger crowd. Prosecco is also one of the most fitting summer day drinks as it doesn’t have the weightiness of a spirit like whiskey or tequila - think of an old-fashioned or a margarita or even the Bloody Mary (which can be too spicy or thick).

Day-drinking Prosecco is more along the lines of getting a beer, without the crazy amount of calories and with a classier appeal; It’s just an easy choice for a pleasing drink that’s simple and chic that doesn’t intrude on your day. And if you’re looking for something sweeter, brands like Frizzenti offer a Rosato Prosecco from the tap with a fruitier, raspberry-like palette that’s tangy but smooth. It lacks the ‘you can’t sit with us’ snootiness of champagne, and when served from the tap with that newly-opened-bottle freshness every time, this light and bubbly, environmentally friendly and refreshing summer indulgence answers every girl’s - and boy’s - dreams of drinking responsibly, even while you’re simply being a daytime lush. Cheers!

* It’s nice to know you are doing what you can for the environment with your drink choice. Eliminating the waste of bottles, corks, labels, weekly delivery trucks, and so on, is an overall step in the greener direction. Reusable kegs also help reduce your carbon footprint.

O

contributors

t r i b tO rs

TONY GALE is an award wining NYC based photographer, in addition to working with Moves he shoots for a variety of editorial, corporate and advertising clients. He is a Sony Artisan of Imagery, a Manfrotto Ambassador, an X-Rite Coloratti and the APA National President. For fun and work he travels and has been to all 50 states and all over the world.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, STORM SANTOS has been a creative his entire life. He was a touring musician with a band as a guitarist before graduating with a degree in Cinematography and TV/ Film. His degree naturally transitioned into a passion for photography. Storm frequently shoots celebrity editorials.

With a background in cinematography DENNYS ILLIC has for the past 16 years also pursued his passion as a professional photographer.

Serving a large array of clients from the major motion picture, television, magazine and music industries. Dennys is now permanently based in Los Angeles where he has become best known for edgy and soulful images that capture the true essence of his subjects

Entrepreneur, innovator, businesswoman, editor and publisher - MOONAH ELLISON brings the same enthusiasm and dynamic energy to all her projects. From a UK based million dollar sales and marketing corporation to an influential fashion & lifestyle magazine in New York City to a successful national event company in the USA involving major players (amongst others Susan Sarandon, Robin Wright, Robert DeNiro, Kerry Washington, Ivanka Trump, Arianna Huffington and media partners MTV, Univision, CBS, ABC, CNN, NBC), Moonah has built success on top of success.

She is married and lives in Manhattan.

British photographer and filmmaker PATRICK FRASER has lived in California for the past 18 years. He photographs editorial features for magazines like Vanity Fair, British Vogue and Esquire as well as color supplements The Sunday Times, Observer and Guardian. He has shot ad campaigns for many leading US brands including Google, Microsoft, Pinterest and Hilton Hotels to name a few. His portrait work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Patrick continues to make documentary and experimental films.

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feature

I

AGAINST EMPATHY

was at home one bright morning a few years ago, avoiding work and surfng the Web, when I heard about the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. The first reports sounded awful but not unusually so— someone had been shot at a school—but gradually the details came in, and soon I learned that Adam Lanza had killed his mother in her bed at about nine in the morning and then gone to Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered twenty young children and six adults. Then he killed himself.

“... I’m most interested in cases where rational people share the same goals and then the question is roughly how to get there.

And there I think reason is better than emotions...” Paul Bloom* There’s a lot to be said about what motivated Lanza to do such a horrific thing, but here I am interested in the reactions of the rest of us. My wife wanted to go to our own children’s school and take them home. She resisted the urge—our sons were teen- agers, and even if they were in elementary school, she knew that this would make no sense. But I understood the impulse. I watched videos of frantic parents running to the crime scene and imagined what that must feel like. Even thinking about it now, my stomach churns.

Later that afternoon I was in a coffeehouse near my office, and a woman at a table next to me was sniffing and hoarse, being consoled by a friend, and I heard enough to earn that although she knew nobody at Sandy Hook, she had a child of the same age as those who were murdered. There will always be events that shock us, such as the terror ist attacks of 9/11 or those many mass shootings that now seem part of everyday life. But for me and the people around me, the murders at Sandy Hook were different. It was an unusually savage crime; it involved children; and it happened close to wherewe lived. Just about everyone around me had some personal connection to the families of Newtown.

We went to a candlelight vigil at the New Haven Green a few days later; my younger son wept, and for months afterward he wore a bracelet in honor of those who died. I later watched a press conference in which the president choked up as he spoke about the killings, and while I am cynical about politicians, I didn’t think for a moment that it was calculated. I was glad to see him so affected. Our response to that event, at the time and later on, was powerfully influenced by our empathy, by our capacity—many would see it as a gift— to see the world through others’ eyes, to feel what they feel. It is easy to see why so many people view empathy as a powerful force for goodness and moral change. It is easy to see why so many believe that the only problem with empathy is that too often we don’t have enough of it. I used to believe this as well. But now I don’t. Empathy has its merits. It can be a great source of pleasure, involved in art and fiction and sports, and it can be a valuable aspect of intimate relationships. And it can sometimes spark us to do good. But on the whole, it’s a poor moral guide. It grounds foolish judgments and often motivates indifference and cruelty. It can lead to irrational and unfair political decisions, it can corrode certain important relationships, such as between a doctor and a patient, and make us worse at being friends, parents, husbands, and wives. I am against empathy, and one of the goals of this book is to persuade you to be against empathy too.

This is a radical position, but it’s not that radical. This isn’t one of those weird pro-psychopathy books. The argument against empathy isn’t that we should be selfish and immoral. It’s the opposite. It’s that if we want to be good and caring people, if we want to make the world a better place, then we are better off without empathy.

Or to put it more carefully, we are better off without empathy in a certain sense.

Some people use empathy as referring to everything good, as a synonym for morality and kindness and compassion. And many of the pleas that people make for more empathy just express the view that it would be better if we were nicer to one another. I agree with this!

Others think about empathy as the act of understanding other people, getting inside their heads and figuring out what they are thinking. I’m not against empathy in that sense either. Social intelligence is like any sort of intelligence and can be used as a tool for moral action. We will see, though, that this sort of “cognitive empathy” is overrated as a force for good. After all, the ability to accurately read the desires and motivations of others is a hallmark of the successful psychopath and can be used for cruelty and exploitation.

The notion of empathy that I’m most interested in is the act of feeling what you believe other people feel—experiencing what they experience. This is how most psychologists and philosophers use the term. But I should stress that nothing rests on the word itself. If you’d like to use it in a broader way, to refer to our capacity for caring and love and goodness, or in a narrower way, to refer to the capacity to understand others, well, that’s one. For you, I’m not against empathy. You should then think about my arguments as bearing on a psychological process that many people—but not you—think of as empathy.

Or you can just forget about terminology altogether and think of this book as a discussion of morality and moral psychology, exploring what it takes to be a good person. The idea I’ll explore is that the act of feeling what you think others are feeling—whatever one chooses to call this—is different from being compassionate, from being kind, and most of all, from being good. From a moral standpoint, we’re better off without it. Many people see this as an unlikely claim. Empathy in this sense is a capacity that many believe to be vitally important. It is often said that the rich don’t make the effort to appreciate what it is like to be poor, and if they did we would have more equality and social justice. When

there are shootings of unarmed black men, commentators on the left argue that the police don’t have enough empathy for black teenagers, while those on the right argue that the critics of the police don’t have enough empathy for what it’s like to work as a police officer, having to face difficult and stressful and dangerous situations. It’s said that whites don’t have enough empathy for blacks and that men don’t have enough empathy for women. Many commentators would agree with Barack Obama that the clash between Israelis and Palestinians will only end when those on each side “learn to stand in each other’s shoes.” In a few chapters, we’ll meet a psychologist who argues that if only the Nazis had had more empathy, the Holocaust would never have happened. There are many who maintain that if doctors and therapists had more empathy, they would be better at their jobs, and if certain politicians had more empathy, they wouldn’t be endorsing such rotten policies.

Certainly many of us feel that if the people in our lives had more empathy for our situations—if they could really feel what our lives are like—they would treat us a lot better.

I think this is all mistaken. The problems we face as a society and as individuals are rarely due to lack of empathy. Actually, they are often due to too much of it.

This isn’t just an attack on empathy.

There is a broader agenda here. I want to make a case for the value of conscious, deliberative reasoning in everyday life, arguing that we should strive to use our heads rather than our hearts.

We do this a lot already, but we should work on doing more.

This is an unfashionable position; some would call it ignorant and naive. Many of my colleagues argue that our most important judgments and actions emerge from neural processes that are not accessible to our conscious selves. Sigmund Freud gets credit for advancing the strong version of this claim, but it’s been resurrected in modern times, sometimes in the most exreme forms. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard some philosopher, critic, or public intellectual state that psychologists have proved we are not rational beings.

This rejection of reason is particularly strong in the moral domain. It is now accepted by many that our judgments of right and wrong are determined by gut feelings empathy, anger, disgust and love and that deliberation and rationality are largely irrelevant. As Frans de Wall puts it: we don’t live in an age of reason, we live in an age of empathy.

Excerpted from: Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion By Paul Bloom. Published 2016 by Ecco

* vox.com/conversations/2017/1/19/14266230/

dish

Foreclosure

by Peter Kougias I never meant it to fall through the cracks in the floorboards that built our home.

I unlock the front door when the sun goes down.

Dinner served on your grandmother’s china, my efforts swirlin’ down the sink.

The box flashes black & white...in dismay.

Crawling under our covers the light stays on, so you won’t trip on the night stand... again Up before dawn, gulping from the bathroom tap; your side still neatly tucked.

Bedtime shivers win.

Morning comes. You haven’t.

Your breakfast. Just concern for me.

(Your face not on the news (yet), thankfully.)

24 hours spun a week’s time to spring a month’s pay to foreclose a year sighted journey.

I wake. I work. I shower. I eat.

I break. I work. I read. I sleep.

Wake. Work. Shower. Eat. Break. Work. Read. Sleep.

I wake. I skim. I eat.

I breathe.

A sign... anything.

I dream your thoughts. and Imagine you coming back..

But the driveway ends at the road, while it travels and speeds down my heart.

The Art of Sparkle

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That’s Beautiful

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rant

Why is it that we all, always, look at our men with a rose-colored hue, albeit of a greater or lesser density? Is it that somewhere, in all of us, down in the deepest, least sensitive crevices of our souls, we have an incumbent belief, indelibly stamped, that our role is to change them... for the better of course.

When you think about it, it’s amazing that any woman would want to cohabitate with a man at all. Generally, men are messier, lazier, and less considerate. The only things they bring into a shared home are their X-Box, their old couch from college, and their dirty socks – oh, and their glorious presence, of course. But we’re willing to part with our hard-earned tranquility and order for the man we love. And we’re able to do this, in large part, due to one of the greatest differentiators between us and the animals: complete and utter denial.

Men have beer goggles; we have love goggles. We’re so enamored with the idea of amour, we are willing to overlook some glaring defaults in the programming, as it were. If your man forgets to do the dishes (everyday), well, he was busy. If he leaves his wet towel on the floor, it’s no big deal to pick it up for him, is it? If he goes out at all hours of the night and comes home blind drunk asking for a sandwich – well, going out with friends isn’t a crime now, is it? And ok, he’s never cooked you a meal, but you love cooking… and he did bring you Cheerios in bed that one time.

Oh yes, there is no end to the shit we will endure at the hands of our lovers. And despite all that Hallmark movie junk about the strength of women’s friendships, we will turn on a bitch quick if our friend dares to call out our boyfriend. Suddenly, the woman who knew you inside and out and was like a sister to you, well, who does she think she is? Your sister? She can’t talk about your man like that! What does she know? Admit it: we are fiercely loyal and territorial, and when a guy moves in with us, he becomes a part of our personal property. It’s an unforgivable affront if someone talks smack about our prop – I mean, boyfriend.

Now, we don’t just overlook a man’s faults because we are the kinder, more forgiving sex; we have an ulterior motive, of course. We think we can change them.

Time and time again, we end up with dudes that are a “work in progress” because we see a “fixer-upper” that with a bit of fine-tuning and table manner lessons will become the polished, perfect man that we desire. (Men, take note: we are trying to change you. Always. If we say we love you just the way you are, we’re lying.

What we mean is: we love you almost just the way you are, but you’d be even better if you would iron your shirts, change your taste in movies, pick up after yourself, and spend more time with our mothers).

We don’t sweat the small stuff, like the football posters he insisted on putting up in the TV room and the ragged sweatpants he actually wears out of the house, because we can, over time, cure him of these habits. Or so we think. What we inevitably learn after the first few attempts is that it’s surprisingly hard to rid an adult of a lifetime of personality traits and behaviors, and that if we do succeed in changing someone, it usually doesn’t turn out the way we want. People don’t like change at the best of times, and especially not when it’s against their will. Despite the fact that most men could use a bit of an overhaul, it’s not a nice feeling to be told you aren’t okay just the way you are. And you know it’s true, ladies. Deep down, we don’t really want a man so unsure of himself that he is willing to change who he is, anyway.

I’ll admit it; we are guiltier of this than men. When have you ever heard a guy say to his friend, “Lucy is a great chick, but she needs to learn how to dress. And the way she chews her food? I could kill her.” The key is, when you find someone who is truly right for you, the way they chew with their mouth open or insist on watching Manswers every Tuesday night won’t bother you, because you just love the person that they are, quirks and all. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves. Because unfortunately, there just aren’t enough Justin Biebers and Jonas Brothers to go around.

HOMME IMPROVEMENT

by Adan Reys

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Despicable Sub-Human Beings

by Rana Husseini*

THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY ON EARTH. OR 5782 IF YOU ARE AN OBSERVANT JEW. 1443 IN THE ISLAMIC CALENDAR. 5000+ FOR HINDUS. HOWEVER YOU COUNT THE YEARS THE POINT IS THE HUMAN RACE HAS BEEN AROUND LONG ENOUGH TO COME UP WITH DECENT VALUES FOR ITS MEMBERS. LONG ENOUGH TO HAVE RID OURSELVES OF THE MOST BEASTLY (LITERALLY) INSTINCTS OF OUR ANIMAL COUSINS. THIS STORY SETS US ALL BACK IN THE DARK AGES. EVERYONE OF US WHO TURNS AWAY OR RATIONALISES. WE IGNORE IT AT OUR PERIL. WE HAVE TO MAKE OURSELVES DESERVE BETTER.

'NZVX

Imagine your sister or daughter being killed for chewing gum, for laughing at a joke in the street, for wearing make-up or a short skirt, for choosing her own boyfriend/husband or becoming pregnant. This is what happens to thousands of women who are murdered each year in the name of honour; that’s hundreds of women every single day. It is very likely that this figure is a gross underestimate. Many cases are never reported and many more so-called honour killings are disguised as suicides and disappearances. This is something I know to be true in my home country of Jordan where, according to police and medical officials, there is an average of twenty-five so-called honour killings annually. A so-called honour killing occurs when a family feels that their female relative has tarnished their reputation by what they loosely term ‘immoral behaviour’. The person chosen by the family to carry out the murder (usually male: a brother, father, cousin, paternal uncle or husband) brutally ends their female relative’s life to cleanse the family of the ‘shame’ she brought upon them. The title ‘honour killing’ is ironic in the extreme because these murders, and the manner in which they are carried out, lack any honour whatsoever.

It was in my capacity as a journalist writing for The Jordan Times, Jordan’s only English-language daily newspaper, that I had an eye-opening encounter with one such murder that changed my life forever. Thankfully, despite strict state censorship of the media when I started reporting in the mid-1990s, my courageous editors agreed that the story should be published. The resulting article, published on 6 October 1994, appeared under the headline ‘Murder in the name of honour’.

I did not know it then, but I had begun a quest that has since become allconsuming and has taken me all over the world. Thanks to the continued support of my editors, I was able to investigate and report on honour killings in depth. As time went on, I gradually realized that while reporting these crimes was a step in the right direction, it was never going to be enough – I had to do something else to end these senseless murders. So I began a sensational campaign to change the law and attitudes in Jordan, a campaign that I, along with many others, have since taken across the orld.

This book tells my story so far, from my humble beginnings as a naïve but enthusiastic and stubborn journalist to the campaigns to change Jordanian law, as well as my experiences in other countries in the Middle East, and investigations into so-called honour killings across Europe (especially the UK) as well as the USA. This book is also an evaluation of the current situation around the world in terms of the numbers of honour killings and the laws available to murderers to escape justice. I am sure that many readers will be truly shocked to see just how widespread and out of control this phenomenon is across the world, from the Third World to the First.

Fighting so-called crimes of honour has proved to be a perilous and traumatic journey. My life has been regularly threatened and my reputation is under constant attack. I find myself frequently slandered and libelled.

Examples include accusations that I am a ‘radical feminist seeking fame’ or that I’m a ‘western-collaborator intent on tarnishing the delicate fabric of the pure [Jordanian] society’.

Unfortunately, some influential and powerful people, such as MPs, judges, lawyers and policemen, have opposed me and, as extraordinary as it seems, believe that those who claim to have killed in the name of honour deserve lenient punishments, because everyone has the right to protect their family’s honour. In my own country, Jordanian law states that those

who murder in a passionate frenzy (for example, men who have caught their wives in the embrace of another) deserve mercy. As we shall see, such laws and leniency are by no means unique to Jordan (for example, a similar law is still in place in the UK). Perpetrators are well aware of the sympathy shown by their country’s legal system, and abuse it to their advantage. Thus, in many cases, the crimes often have serious hidden intentions far removed from honour – such as the murder of female siblings in order to claim sole inheritance of the family estate.

Murders are often meticulously planned by several family members but are then claimed as ‘crimes of honour’, again far removed from the state of blind anger associated with this crime. Sometimes all that is needed to incite murder is a deliberate and malicious campaign of gossip. In fact, the majority of so-called honour killings I reported on were based on mere suspicion, something I have since seen repeated in countries across the world. The problem is not restricted to adultery. Generational conflict, teen culture, urbanization and adolescent rebellion are common trigger factors in immigrant communities in European countries as well as the USA. As I have already mentioned, honour killing is a global phenomenon and takes place in many more countries than most people realize. Besides Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, Palestine, India, Israel, Iraq, Pakistan, Morocco, Turkey, Yemen and Uganda, honour killings occur throughout Europe and the USA. The number of honour killings has been rising in recent years among immigrant communities in Europe, particularly Germany, France, Scandinavia and the UK – and the authorities have been caught napping. For example, British police are currently reviewing more than one hundred murder cases in the belated realization that they may in fact have been so-called honour killings. Until recently, so-called honour killings have received little attention because they are all too often disguised as a traditional or cultural practice which has to be respected and accepted by everyone. Many people associate them exclusively with Islamic communities, but while some Muslims do murder in the name of honour – and sometimes claim justification through the teachings of Islam – Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and others also maintain traditions and religious justifications that attempt to legitimize honour killings. But crimes of honour are just that: crimes, pure and simple. For me, wherever their roots are supposed to lie, they are nothing to do with tradition, culture or religion. They are all about control – an effective method of regulating the freedom of movement, freedom of expression and sexuality of women. They violate rights to life, liberty and bodily integrity; they violate prohibition of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment; the prohibition on slavery; the right to freedom from gender-based discrimination and sexual abuse and exploitation; the right to privacy and to marry and start a family.

I am not a legal, religious, cultural, historical, tribal, social or moral expert, but I am an Arab Muslim woman intent upon living in a sound society where all members benefit from justice, regardless of rank, religion, race or gender. I, like any other citizen of this world, seek to feel safe. I want to live as part of a system in which crimes are seen for what they are, freed of the double standards that mask their heinous nature, and punished with a severity that matches the crime.

* This is the introduction from ‘Murder in the Name of Honor’

by Rana Husseini

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No topic is off-limits own as the women bring their es, and opinions, life experienc pics to the headline generating to iconic table... ”

The Estefans

Moonah Ellison: So let’s talk. It’s such an amazing phenomenon you’ve actually created. It would be lovely to hear the grassroots of how this happened.

Gloria Estefan: Okay, well two years ago, I got approached

by Ellen Rakieten, who I had worked with in the Oprah years. She’s like a pedigree, an amazing pedigree in that work, and Westbrook Entertainment, which is Jada and Will Smith’s company. I met with them in LA because I was wondering what they would possibly want.

They came to me and said they wanted to expand the Red Table Talk family and we want you, your daughter, and your niece, Lili, to be the next family. And instantly, I went like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is a no-brainer.’ I was thrilled because I thought I’d get to spend more time with them if they say yes. So, I called them up. Lili had not yet seen Jada’s show and right away, she goes, ‘Yes tia, whatever.’

And then when she saw it, I think she went, ‘Uh oh.

What’d I get myself into here?!’

Lili Estefan: I’m like, ‘What?! I said yes?’ And then it was actually fun, because I thought about it and I’m like, I don’t know, this may be something totally different from what I’ve done for years at Univision and I think it’s something that can really help other people because when I started watching the show, it was incredible!

GE: Lili came from Cuba with her dad and her younger brother. She lived with Emilio and me for a year and a half.

In our house. With her grandparents, Emilio’s parents, and my newborn son, they lived a couple blocks away when we were finally able to get a house for her grandmother and then she moved in with them. We’ve gone on every vacation. So I knew that Lili had so much to offer.

LE: Yes, this was a totally different platform. It’s incredible the difference between how you feel and how you can manage feelings and your own experiences. Very different.

ME: And I think both of you are touching on some really, really interesting concepts and conversations.

Emily brings something to the table that changes the dynamic of the conversation. So Emily, can I throw this question at you. You have two powerful sources in all that they bring to the table to somebody like you, who is a musician, who is touching the LGBTQ community, who is liberating her ancestry, the roots of where you came from. You are in a traditional cultural environment and you are this firework that is going off in the middle of all this tradition. Can you tell me your perspective.

Emily Estefan: I think that’s a great question. I think it’s actually quite interesting because obviously our conversations get edited down and a lot of times there are opinions that I end up on the more conservative side of and my mom and Lili will push the envelope a little bit and other times, you know, I am not the most...

Looking to build on the success of the first season of their Facebook Watch series Red Table Talk: The Estefans, three generations of Estefan ladies— Gloria, Lili, and Emily—get set for season 2 in the fall and will no doubt dissect topics that affect women worldwide. I happened to catch them all together in Miami and we talked about political correctness, cancel culture, how past experiences can shape us, and the one taboo topic the series won’t touch. reserved in my delivery. I’m a passionate person. I think there’s something that traditionally in our culture; you don’t’ talk back to your mother, and within that there’s a validity and a respect... I would argue that also in olden days parents maybe weren’t doing the best to communicate with their children. So I think that being able to bounce off of each other is what gives the show, in any iteration, its magic.

We do a lot of learning at the table, a lot of healing, a lot of growing. It’s not always tense, it’s not always not tense, we cry way more than I’d like to admit.

GE: Way too much LE: Waaay more.

EE: I’m like, I can’t believe the table hasn’t melted at this point! But yeah, it’s a challenge... but a well-welcomed challenge.

LE: I’ve been in front of the TV forever, but to have a moment you feel comfortable within your own skin, it takes years.

EE: It’s a give and take, ‘cause it can get dangerous.

We’re so exposed... in the past you could be more private. Now, people are all up in your space whether you like it or not.

GE: Yeah. By the way, one caveat if my mother were still alive, there’s no way in hell I’d be doing this show.

EE: Well, if abuela was alive and we did this show, I think WE wouldn’t be alive. I think she’d kill us.

GE: Or she’d steal the show. Yeah she would’ve gotten to it eventually, but it just would’ve been really tough.

EE:: Hold on, though. My grandma, I feel, actually gave us a lot of strength and a lot of practice for the red table, because she would sit at her round glass table in her house all day.

People would come there, talk to her but she did not move, so we’re kinda keeping the table alive, her table alive.

EE:: Yeah, I personally think that cancel culture is really dangerous. We have to navigate that extremely carefully because it is such a negative, malicious thing to all of a sudden put a box around somebody and make an opinion about them and a lot of these people who are being canceled nobody even knows them intimately. That’s why I think Red Table is important because you want to give somebody an opportunity.

GE: Exactly, she was like the Godmother, like the Godfather. Rule the roost from there. But yeah, this would’ve been tough for her.

So it’s difficult, but cancelling culture, I’ll say, I’ll speak for myself, I think, is garbage. I think it’s a counterproductive system. Like it’s just going to fuel more anxiety, more stress. When people are afraid, fear is the opposite of love.

ME: So Obama just launched his new book and one of the things he said, identical to what Emily just said there. When Michelle Obama was in the White House she felt she could never be off guard. Now all three of you are in the public eye, good, bad, indifferent, aggressive, however you want to look at it.

GE: I studied psychology and communication so this is incredibly interesting to me and what I see it as and we’re seeing a lot of it is abuse of power. We’re seeing power being abused on all levels, coming from the top, all the way down.

EE:: Mhm. Snaps fingers

Lili, how do you grapple with the culture of what is happening right now, how do you support, endorse, or blast out, call out stuff that is bad, wrong, incorrect? We’re all now in isolation, reflecting on our lives. How do you deal with the scariness, that anxiety, that tension of ‘I can’t say anything wrong, I can’t step out of place.’ How do you come to terms with that space and how do you educate?

GE: Listen, we’ve been public figures growing up, and Emily grew up in a family that’s totally public. I decided at some point to lead with love, lead with examples. For me, how do I deal with it? How do I call out things that I don’t think should be going up?

I think of my kids and I think of the world that I want to leave for them. And I usually say when I’m doing La Gorda y La Flaca, (her Univision talk show) ‘Raúl, you know, I cannot approve of this because I wouldn’t want my daughter to be that person. I try to normalize things I think would be normal for my family. I try to think of ten years, twenty years from now, what is the world that I want for them. I had to learn to be very careful, but very objective. I don’t know if I’m saying the right thing or the wrong thing so what do I say? ‘Guys, I’d rather not say anything, because right now it’s so hard to make a comment about something.’

GE: And when that becomes normal, yes, people have power in the media, that’s what cancel culture is. It’s like, ‘I don’t like what you said so now I’m going to rally the troops and not buy your product…”

EE: Don’t stop there, death threats, camping outside of houses...

GE: This is one of the downfalls of everyone having an opinion whether you’ve earned the right to share that opinion. Whatever the point is, everyone now has a place where they can just spew their hatred. Behind that anonymity and behind… you can’t get to me. So there’s going to be a reckoning for all of this.

GE: Every day, Monday through Friday, it gets to the point where you’re like, ‘When am I ever politically correct?’ or ‘What am I doing wrong?

The show is all about my opinion and Raúl’s opinion so for me, it’s been hard.

GE: And by the way, I [studied] the Holocaust in college because I wanted to understand how something like that happens but the one lesson I learned is that silence is our biggest enemy.

But when we start seeing the degradation of the basic human freedoms and of the things we have held up as truth… Truth is getting dismantled. Someone will say the truth like scientists aren’t being believed. It’s very, very disruptive.

EE: Gloria Estafan 2024!

GE: No, no, well I couldn’t if I wanted to, which I would never want to. I wasn’t born

here. But yeah, we’re living in some dangerous times and we have to step up. You know, there has to be a point where you say enough. That’s the bottom line.

volatile, it causes polarization, and what we wanted to do with this first series is to bring people in. Later on, that might change, but right now, that was the one subject, that was it.

GE: The first time that it happened, we never thought it was gonna take us through the years through this process that now… It is what it is and we don’t know how to get out of that, right?

EE: There were also a bunch of subjects that we didn’t get to that we spent a lot of time talking about. Also people’s feedback, we had a mental health episode and people were like, ‘Oh, I would love to hear more about that.’ We have limited time. As long as people keep watching, we won’t’ shut up, as clearly you can see.

GE: The answer is Emily. Their generation. You guys have the power. I am very proud of how young people came out to vote. I am very proud of our young people who came out to protest an injustice when the George Floyd incident happened. They thought first about defending justice, then about their own health. So those things make me hopeful for things that are coming.

GE: Well, we didn’t grow up with social media.

EE: You guys just grew up with social.

ME: I’d love to ask one final closing question for all of you . Is there any single subject that you feel is daring enough to bring to your table conversation?

Is there anything that you would question, ‘Do we talk about it, do we not talk about it? Who are we going to offend, who are we not going to offend?’

And do you take that chance?

GE: Very simple. Politics. We left it off the table.

We left it off the table because, right now, in the climate that we are seeing, the fact that family members and close friends have differing views and the fact that I don’t think there’s anything anyone could say to the other party that would change anything right now. Because this is the moment we’re living in and we want to salvage our relationships because they are going to go far beyond four years or eight years.

EE: But hold on a minute. Because we keep saying, ‘Oh we’re not going to discuss politics, we’re not talking about politics.’ However, I have to disagree because I cannot say, but we do have a very important—in my idea—political [discussion coming up], not in the way that we describe politics now, but informative, useful, and helpful on another form of our government that’s really really important that I’m super excited about.

ME: And I salute that! That is really amazing to hear.

Lilli, tell me what your thoughts are on picking up on what Gloria and Emily are saying on the do’s and don’ts. How far do you go?

GE: I understand perfectly why I decided to not bring politics to this Table, because as Gloria said, we want to unite people and bring people to something that we’re really going to connect.

Talking about politics is really hard to connect now with people that are on the other side. Why? Because we’re in the extremes.

EE: It shouldn’t be though!

GE: Extremes. There’s nobody in the middle and that’s why I think the United States is so divided. The country is very divided right now. It’s not a good moment. I really don’t feel...I don’t know why.

EE: Although I will say that it is important that we grow towards having conversations and respecting each other’s opinions, because when I was growing up, it didn’t matter if you were a Democrat or a Republican.

Those debates were with respect. The person who is in charge should be able to handle themselves.

GE: And we’re not affiliated. I mean, I’m not affiliated. Emilio is not affiliated. We don’t even want to be independent because it’s a party. The party system, I think, is severely damaged.

ME: Can I be a fly on the wall at that Table when you do the conversation on politics?

GE: Absolutely. Hey, you can come to the Table!

EE: You’ll be the mediator. The mediator.

GE: Give us your two cents. I have a gavel, so watch out.

GE: But politics is life, really, the word politics is life. The problem is, right now, the climate that we’re living in—it is not going to be a useful tool to reach out to people right at this moment. It’s

EE: Oh god, OH MY GOD! When she brings out that gavel, it comes from a rip in time in space. I don’t know what it is, but it’s always there.!!

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RYAN MURPHY AMERICAN HORROR STORY, GLEE Ryan Murphy has cultivated an impressively expansive collection of work over the past decade, somehow perfectly balancing each project he handles. The true display of Murphy’s talent lies in his ability to execute each genre he enters with equal precision and creativity. From Glee, an upbeat and quirky show, to the gory and complex American Horror Story, Murphy never fails to shock audiences with his everpersisting innovation.

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DEE REES MUDBOUND This writer-director, recently nominated for an oscar for her 2020 film Mudbound, has gone seemingly overnight from an NYU student being mentored by Spike Lee to an award winning director. Just in the past ten years, Dee Rees has made a huge splash in the film community, winning an array of awards for her sundance film Pariah. Her next film, Bessie, was released on HBO to a wave of positive reviews from audiences and critics alike, winning her four Primetime Emmy awards. Her concentration on society’s perception of class, race, and gender leads to emotional dramatic works that are filled with energy and zeal

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PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON PHANTOM THREAD, THERE WILL BE BLOOD Regarded by the American Film Institute as “one of American film’s modern masters,” Anderson has cultivated a long and accomplished index of highly acclaimed films. His character studies are unlike any other of our time, with protagonists descending into madness with such subtlety that you cannot help but understand and empathize with even the cruellest of characters. Whether it is the obsessively scrupulous couturier in the 2017 film Phantom Thread, or the merciless oil tycoon in There Will be Blood, Anderson gently convinces you to sympathize with characters that would normally be seen as villains. His achievement in writing, directing, and cinematography make him a modern renaissance man in the film world

KATHRYN BIGELOW THE HURT LOCKER Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to ever win an oscar for Best Director, made history with the 2008 release of The Hurt Locker. Her dedication to surpassing the regular Hollywood portrayal of simplified, black and white morality set her apart from many of the director’s that also worked within the war/ thriller genre. In each of her films she focuses a great deal on character study, centering well written and complex characters in the frame of an action packed world.

BONG JOON HO PARASITE Bong Joon Ho made history with his 2019 film Parasite.

The film is one of the most highly acclaimed pictures in the past ten years, breaking molds in both the film itself and the fact that it won an Academy Award for Best Picture- the first foreign language film to take home the prize.

And it absolutely deserved it.

Many writers and directors attempt the satirical statement on class, but none with such cleverness as Parasite. Bong Joon Ho cultivates a tonally incomparable film that swings between class focused satire and authentic familial moments, all the while developing a background that is deeply unsettling. Many of his films are conceptually similar, hitting on points of social inequity underlined by a sharpwitted script that is also deeply disquieting, but each film is also so unique that you simply cannot watch only one.

RYAN COOGLER BLACK PANTHER The 2013 release of Fruitvale Station opened many eyes, and hearts, to a story that may have otherwise gone unnoticed had it been attempted by any other director. Coogler depicted the reallife character of Oscar Grant with complexity and care, turning this already tragic story into one that would be felt by all who watched the film.

Unlike the plethora of blaxploitation films that had come before, Coogler was sure to create a character that was deeply human, with ambitions and heartaches that had not been shown often in many of Hollywood’s past black characters.

His most recent success, Black Panther, was also met with rave reviews. The story was masterfully told and cultivated a giant following that crossed the borders of just the normal superhero crowdthis film was deeply and personally felt by many, which can be difficult to accomplish in a genre that is mostly meant for pure, easy entertainment.

GRETA GERWIG LADY BIRD After writing and starring in many films over the years, Greta Gerwig finally made her directorial debut with the 2018 film Lady Bird. The film was a deep dive into the life of a Sacramento teen, struggling with parental relationships, teen angst, and a fear of the unknown future.

It is now revered as one of the decade’s quintessential coming of age movies. Her next directorial project, an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, was immediately embraced by both critics and ambitious girls everywhere. The script is filled with beautiful and heart wrenching monologues, but the one that will forever stand out is Jo’s tear inducing speech: “Women have minds and souls as well as just hearts, and they’ve got mbition and talent as well as just beauty. And I’m sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for.

I’m so sick of it!”

JORDAN PEELE GET OUT After a long career in comedy, Jordan Peele has finally taken on the new role of writer and director. Get Out, Peele’s directorial debut, was at once horrific and clever, soothing audiences with comedic relief before pulling them back into the disquieting world of a twilight zone-esque suburban nightmare. His next critically acclaimed film, Us, follows this same tone of satirical horror, though focusing much more on the latter.

Jordan Peele delivers terror, social commentary, and comedy in a fashion that keeps audiences in a constant state of intrigue and surprise.

The decision to have kids or not is probably the most important in most individual lives. That individual decision, however, is certainly not the most important in our collective life. So why does it rule us? Why has it such an unrepresentative, disproportionate effect on us all. We are ruled by this reverence to pregnancy, new born babies, toddlers, preteens, early teens, teens, adolescents, and so on. Of course we must look to the most vulnerable, and give them due respect, care and attention, but surely adults, individually and collectively, are the most important and productive members of society. We’re not animals after all.

You know how it feels to have an annoying song stuck in your head? Or even worse, an irritating commercial – you know, the one about the new Timothée Chalamet movie that makes you want to gouge your eyes out and go buy a copy at the same time? It seems that more often than not, those insidious bits of marketing propaganda have one target and one target only: young people. Unfortunately, the rest of us are caught in the crossfire.

Most people want to have kids; I accept this fact but don’t truly understand it. Think about the pressure: it’s ultimately up to you whether your child becomes the next President of the United States (great) the next Dylann Roof (not so great) or the next Tik Tok star (even worse). Anyway, because we live in this proud, free country, you can exercise your right to procreate, just like I can exercise the right to smoke, get really fat, or tie up my consensual partner in a closet dungeon on long weekends (just sayin’).

The difference is, most of the personal decisions we make in our lives have no bearing on anyone else; you don’t have to hear about my eccentric sexcapades or watch me eat an entire bucket of KFC in one sitting. So why then must I be subjected to endless commercials about the wonders of potty time? Why must I endure your whining children in a five star restaurant? Why must I accept those “what’s wrong with you” looks when I tell someone that the idea of having children is about as exciting as the idea of a daily, 18-year long colonic regimen?

Our society places a disproportionate emphasis on our youth. Sure, they are the decision makers of tomorrow and sure, their impressionable minds need to be nurtured and filled with love and knowledge. But what about the decision makers of today? What about the vast majority of adults who still have potential, lives to live, goals to fulfill? It seems that as soon as we are old enough to accomplish something in our lives, we’re told to have kids and sacrifice that precious time to the next generation – who turn around and do the exact same thing. So who’s actually getting stuff done around here? If I added up the time I spend each year forced to listen to Jonas Brothers’ songs and watching Marvel trailers, I could have finished writing my first best-selling novel by now!

The amount of time I spend every day being bombarded by “kid stuff” is mindboggling: commercials, ads, loud little urchins running into my kneecaps on the street – the list goes on. I absorb so much kid-related information a day, sometimes I feel like I have one of my own, and that, my friends, does not make me happy. Why are fashion trends determined by 17-year old celebrities? Why do I have to sift through 50 different sug-

ary cereals to get to my Cheerios? (Ok, I’ll admit Froot Loops are pretty awesome, but still) Why are there interactive video games for toddlers, and why, oh why am I even aware of it? Stop the madness!

Parents, out of sheer stupidity, have become part of the problem; they don’t realize that this is just another way companies rope us in, make us suckers and slaves to our culture of overconsumption. They don’t even have to market intelligently; they just hit you where it hurts most – the ovaries. With bright colors, cartoon animals and sparkly music, they convince you that you’re a bad parent if you don’t buy, buy, buy, and buy some more. And you buy it, alright. Wise old grandparents will tell you there’s no manual for being a parent – but you will still spend $50 at Barnes and Noble on just such a thing.

I’m not saying that kids shouldn’t get attention and toys and movies just for them – I’m just saying we should take a long hard look at what all of this stuff really is and what its use is, if it has one. I’d say 90% of children’s products today are superfluous and unnecessary. Remember when we were kids and we played outside in the sunshine and mud? We didn’t have Calming Vibes Hedgehog and we got along just fine. I’m pretty sure (and I know this from experience) that the only adult sanctuary left is the strip club. I guess it could be worse.

Let’s get back to basics: animals exist to procreate. At one time, as primitive animals ourselves, we did too. But with the wonderful gift of bigger brains, we have come up with other reasons to exist: to create beautiful art, to help others, to make the world a better place to live in. We don’t need to create copies of ourselves to feel like we were useful on this earth; unfortunately, that’s not what most of society – not to mention your in-laws – want you to believe.

I’m sure there are a lot of “breeders” reading this right now who are positively fuming at my callous and selfish commentary – as proud parents, you probably think it’s justified that the world revolves around children.

Having a child is a joy like no other, you say. It’s the most important thing you can do with your life. There’s something wrong with you if you don’t want kids!

How about this: let’s you and I call a truce. I won’t call you crazy for buying your eight-year-old an iPhone, and you won’t call me evil for kindly suggesting you keep your spawn on a leash. You and I and all the kiddies of the world can live together in harmony – just keep your snotty noses, Never Have I Ever episodes, and Baby Bjorn’s to yourself.

by Ashleigh VanHouten

www.lilithparis.com

STEPHANIE BEATRI Z cover story

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There are things about New York that are so special and that cannot be found anywhere else.

The vibe of the city, the energy of the city, the lights, the museums, the eclectic mix of people all condensed in one very small space, and the history of New York City, it really is like no other place in the world. To hear Stephanie Beatriz wax poetic about our fair city is a breath of fresh air and everything we need after a disastrous and catastrophic 2020.

As things slowly start

to open again, the timing is oh so right for the highly-anticipated movie version of In The Heights, the 2008 Broadway smash hit musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton uberfame) and a book by Quiara Alegría Hudes.

It was nominated for thirteen Tony Awards that year and won four, including Best Musical.

Heights follows the lives of residents in the largely Dominican Washington Heights section of Upper Manhattan’s West Side.

by Yvette Chen

photograhy: Dennys Ilic

“.. yo follo so fo is,

Location: Sunset Marquis Photographer: Dennys Ilic Hair: Kiki Heitkotter Makeup: Diane Da Silva Stylist: Ariel Tunnell Look 1: (Garden ) Floral Dress: Preen by Thornton Bregazzi Loafers: Stuart Weitzman Earrings: Mejuri Ring: Mejuri Ring: Selva Isla Jewelry Look 2: (orange couch) Dress: Preen by Thornton Bregazzi Boots: Stuart Weitzman Earrings and rings: Selva Isla Jewelry Look 3: (extreme closeups) Top: alice + olivia by stacey bendet Blazer - Vintage Ralph Lauren Earrings: Mejuri

.. Trusting ourself and owing that ort of spark or yourself , it’s everything... ”

Heights is directed by Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) and was supposed to be released in 2020 but COVID-19 killed that timeframe. It had its global premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York on June 9 and opened to the masses June 10 while streaming on HBO Max. It has been extremely well-received, garnering a 95% Audience Score from Rotten Tomatoes. Beatriz plays Carla, one of the three salon ladies, the two others being Daniela, played by Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Cuca, played by Dasha Polanco. You’ve seen Beatriz in smaller roles in The Closer with Kyra Sedgwick or Southland with Regina King and Ben McKenzie, but she shines in her role as Detective Rosa Diaz on SNL vet Andy Samberg’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the Golden Globe-winning and Emmy-nominated comedy series depicting a fictional Brooklyn police precinct with its cast of zany characters. The 10-episode eighth and final season is set to premiere in August on NBC. But for Beatriz, her tratejectory to stardom from humble and small beginnings is a dream come true.

She’s been acting for as long as she can remember, born in Argentina to a Colombian father and Bolivian mother. She grew up in Webster, Texas and started acting in junior high school. “I had the opportunity to do plays and once I did that I just felt for the first time that I knew what I wanted to do with my life, which was to be on stage. At that time that’s as big as I can dream about it. I remember one role where I played a villain and I got to wear a top hat, a handlebar mustache, and do all this physical comedy. I specifically remember the feeling of an audience sort of rolling in laughter all at once and it was my peers, a bunch of 6, 7, 8th graders laughing hysterically at what I was doing. And I just felt so much joy in that moment and I wanted to be able to capture that over and over.”

After high school, Beatriz got her bachelors of Fine Arts in Theater at Stephens College in Missouri. In between her second and third semesters she went to a summer stock theater the college owned in Okoboji, Iowa, working for ten weeks and doing nine full-length productions. Beatriz got to do everything.

“You’re doing costumes, the lights, ushering people to their seats, you’re working in the box office, you’re rehearsing your play for multiple hours a day. It was the most intense theater experience I’ve ever had and I loved every second of it.” She then went to New York and experienced something called color blind casting, or non-traditional casting, a form of casting where an actor is chosen to play a character where race is not relevant to the role. (Beatriz got to play Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and traditionally that role is not casted with a Latina.)

With the Heights opening with great buzz, Beatriz is quick to reflect on her roles as Carla and compares the role to her portrayal of Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn NineNine. “The basic similarities that they have are that they are both members of the LGBTQIA community and they both care a fuck-ton about their communities.

But that’s pretty much where it ends,” insists Beatriz.

“Their voices are different. Their physicality is different.

Their energies are different. In fact one of the highest compliments I can get is when someone says, ‘I didn’t know that was you at first.’ I feel like one of the things that is such a compliment is when people say I don’t want to see anyone but you play Rosa. I don’t wanna hear you talk in your regular voice. So that means I did my job really well because you connect with that character as if she’s real.”

The opportunity to land the role of Carla started as peer pressure and a little bit of coincidence.

Beatriz heard that they were starting to cast for the film during the week Lin-Manuel Miranda was guest starring on Nine-Nine. She had visited the set because she wanted to see him, being old friends from New York. She then got a text message that read “They’re starting to cast for In The Heights.” Hanging with fellow Nine-Nine castmate Melissa Fumero, Beatriz mentioned she wanted to try out for Heights. “She [Fumero] said, ‘You should audition for that.’ I said, ‘I don’t think I’m right for anything except for maybe Carla and that role is really funny but I don’t know.’

Melissa sternly peer-pressured me into trying to get an audition and really stuck it to me and said, ‘You better go in for that! You better not let that opportunity pass you by. Get a voice lesson. Get a song ready. Feel prepared. Get in there and give it your best shot and if they don’t cast you okay, but you better not let this pass before you even try!’” So she got the voice lesson and auditioned and got a call back and did a good job.

Carla was booked.

Beatriz is openly bisexual (she has been married to marketing consultant Brad Hoss since 2018) and champions everyone to just trust themselves when it comes to sexuality. “You know yourself better than anybody else knows you. Even your parents, even your closest friends. It does take some time slowing down and listening to yourself and trying to get rid of all the other influences and voices that you might have clouded your own instincts with…. But it’s the outright rejection that I imagined it might be. And I think that again I wish I had trusted myself and maybe even them [parents] a little bit more. But I think that goes for all things, it’s not just about coming out but maybe following your heart about what you want to do in life or who you want to be or whether or not you deserve to be in any kind of space that you’re trying to enter.

Trusting yourself and following that sort of spark for yourself is, it’s everything.”

Some of the things that Beatriz wants to do in the future are producing and directing, something she didn’t really understand until she was working on Nine-Nine. “Essentially what producing and directing are is givingyour life over to the piece of art that you’re creating. Andy Samberg is one of the most talented, hardest working people I’ve ever met in my entire life, he thinks about everything all the time that has anything to do with the show. His talent is all over that thing, obsessed with making it the best thing it can possibly be. And because of their obsession, it lands with other people. Other people like what it is. And I think that that’s something I want to explore doing more of. You know being allowed that obsessive voice in the room.”

I end my call with Beatriz on her way to a relative’s house to watch Heights with 20 or so family members. What the future holds for Beatriz is truly up to her. For now she’ll soak in all the Heights fame, enjoy the birth of her baby boy. Brooklyn NineNine will air in the fall, then it’s over. “And so that chapter of my life is really closed. But the book, the story of my life, is not over. I don’t know what’s coming so it’s a very insecure kind of moment for an actor, but it’s also a moment where I have to trust that the things that I want to be a part of, the kind of things I wanna put out into the world, are to keep coming my way.”

“... And I think that that’s something I want to explore doing more of. You know being allowed that obsessive voice in the room... ”

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Fernanda Urrejola MOVES: I’ve got so many questions lined up be cause you’ve led a really interesting life which is exciting. But we have to kick off with the icon that you’ve just finished working with, Clint Eastwood.

What was that like?

FERNANDA URREJOLA: It was a dream come true. He is such an amazing man! His energy, his life, he’s so caring and, I must say, I think that was the most caring and respectful set that I have ever been on. It was really amazing. Everyone there wanted to work with him of course, he’s Clint Eastwood, but because we filmed during Covid it wasn’t as easy to be fully immersed with the crew. I’m one of those actors who likes to get involved with the crew and understand that this is teamwork and a team effort. But because of Covid you couldn’t really relate, all you could see was their eyes and then when they were eating you were like “oh that’s the face. That’s who you are.” So it was really weird in that sense, but I did have some time to talk with the crew and everyone told me that if Clint called, they would drop everything and come work with him.

I understood then that the way that he is able to do it stil, even at 91 years of age, is because he basically has his family working with him on all his sets. Most of the crew have been with him for 36 years. It was beautiful and he was great.

“...We don’t allow the change to happen. And that’s something as an adult we need, ... We have to relese all that and be open to whatever we need to change...”

Clint Eastwood - “...It was beautiful and he was great.

He’s amazing...”

M: And I imagine he’s also a don’t mess with me kind of guy. He’s like just do it.

FU: Yes, only one time he was like “what’s going on, everyone shut up,” because everyone was talking and being very loud on set. But as soon as he said that everyone was quiet and attentive.

He is so respectful about it though, that it makes everyone around him also be respectful.

M: yeah I bet. And also I guess because I also was reading that you are now producing something. So you’re also working behind the camera as well as in front of the camera, and that must be a huge kind of learning curve to be with some - body, because obviously Clint started off acting. That was it acting was his life and that’s what he did and then he went into music and movies and producing and writing and behind the camera.

FU: Yes I want to be able to keep going and working even into my old age and keep working with the people that really want to work with me as well.

That is one thing that is very important, to find the right people to work with. Your family on the job. I asked him (Clint) “what is the secret”? And he said “just be happy and do what you want and everything will happen for you”. I’ve learned so much. I wrote a movie with my partner (Francisca Alegría), she’s a director and writer as well, and we came here to Chile to shoot our movie and I was able to be in every department. It was so fun and I learned so much. It’s different to be on the other side of the camera and I loved it. I think I’ll keep doing it.

M: Is it too soon to kind of say yeah my preference is eventually to be behind the camera down the road.

FU: I think I’ll definitely direct in the near future and yes I will keep writing, I am actually writing a TV show at the moment, so I’m already in it and I want to keep doing it. But I love acting, that’s my thing too. So I’ll be like Clint, I’ll do everything.

M: That’s fantastic. So can you share your project?

Or is that still something you can’t talk about? FU: I don’t know if I can just yet, but I am very excited about it!

M: That’s fantastic. Wishing you all the best with that. That’s amazing. I think one of the things with you I’m sensing is that you are very passionate about everything that you do. You can feel it, the energy is so out there, which is fantastic because it is rare. And it’s electrifying and it resonates with everything that you touch. I’ve learned that you live in both the West Coast and in Chile and you go back because I’m sensing your roots are very important.

FU: My roots are very important to me, yes. I would like to keep working here in Chile, but I also want to keep growing my career in the US, and internationally. Right now, I had come back to Chile to shoot a movie. It is a Chilean movie so I had to be here. Then I was called to be on a Mexican series, which was also shooting here in Chile, so I stayed longer to film that show - it was perfect timing and everything worked out.

But next week I’ll be traveling back to the US and hopefully working on some fun projects there.

I’m excited to be part of helping the Chilean industry grow, but also be able to film and produce things that are for international audiences. So I think that’s my plan. To keep connecting both spaces.

M: I’m guessing that you’re in production now in Chile.

FU: I am, but I am going back to the US next week.

M: : Do you ever have any regrets that you wish you had kind of followed through with science and then still gone into acting? Because women in science today are huge.

FU: Do you mean regretting not acting before?

Or regretting not doing something in science?

M: In science. So to finish off the question, do you have any regrets in not following the path of your parents? Or taking their lead? Because Fernanda “...We don’t allow the change to happen.

And that’s something as an adult we need, ... We have to release all that and be open to whatever we need to change...” I know they were not

photography: Paz Vasquez happy about you acting. You still pursued it because you’re passionate about it. But how did you come to deal with the reality of keeping your parents on your side and knowing to follow your passion?

FU: Well I am very happy with my choices to be honest. I do love science though and I think that science is now the new religion, or it should be! I wanted to become a doctor if I was not going to be an actress.

I thought about becoming a doctor or an architect.

Those were my two paths outside of acting. I love science, I love biology but I’m very happy with my choices. Sometimes I regret that I didn’t start acting when I was younger, which many actors in this industry do. Like all the actors that I love, they grew up acting. When I act with children and I see their passion, it’s like yeah that was me when I was younger.

M: right, it aligns. And obviously one of the other success stories and acting paths that you took was Narcos. That has a huge amount of presence both in the storyline and what it’s actually about. Can you share a little bit about your approach today and what you’ve taken away from playing in Narcos?

FU: That was a great show to be in. It was very fun to act in it and it was a huge production. It was all very interesting to me. But at the same time it was very sad as it is a theme that will continue to grow as a reality in our society. It’s a narrative we keep feeding and it keeps growing along the years. I wish that was not the reality, but it is. As a Chilean, we didn’t have the “Narcos” or the drug dealer culture. It is something that we now understand and know about, but when I was growing up it was not a reality in my country. So I had to study a lot to understand that role better. People that don’t have the understanding of it’s reality, they look at that and they want it. So it’s tricky to have it on the screen so much because you create that culture around it and it can be dangerous.

M: : Let’s talk about the charity side of what you actually do for children and the philanthropy side of your thought process and wanting to constantly give back because you can see the need. It’s something that you’re passionate about and children are the future in my opinion and they are the neglected part of life sometimes. So I’d love to learn a little bit more about that.

FU: Oh yeah well it’s weird though because we’re in a very adult centric culture. All around the world. The first time we even started talking about children’s rights was

“... to start it’s just wanting to change and being open to that change, allowing that change to happen. We either evolve or we’re so stuck with our past...” not that long ago. The good thing is you can see change finally happening; I think it’s getting better. But even still we have long ways to go. We need to listen, to really pay attention to what children need daily. Everyone says “I want to help, I want to do something”, but most don’t know what to do or how to help. Perhaps the first step can be to create a consciousness and awareness that we are a very adult centric society and we have to change that. The children really are the future - take their stance on world issues like climate change. Teenagers are the ones going out and saying what they need and want, that really makes me so happy and hopeful. They don’t believe the adults anymore. They really know what they want and they’re going to make the changes. And I hope we as adults, can grow with them and help them because they’re our hope.

M: Do you feel that there’s anything adults can learn from the youth today because it is empowering for us to see the power that they have when they are united.

Because of the digital platforms, because of the information that is so accessible to them.

FU: There are so many things. To start it’s just wanting to change and being open to that change, allowing that change to happen. We either evolve or we’re so stuck with our past. We have to release all that and be open to whatever we need to change. That’s one thing for sure.

The other thing is that we have to remember what it’s like to be a child, we have to play more, be more optimistic and regain that sense of wonder. Understanding that as children, we can always learn more and be open.

I think as adults, we shut down so much. And it’s something that we need to keep remembering to stay open.

M: Thank you for sharing because it’s empowering to hear you say some of the things that are really important to you. When people think about entertainment, they

don’t realize that there’s a lot more that actually goes on in your life that isn’t shared because you don’t have the time to share everything. So tell me in regards to the future, what project do you have coming up?

FU: Well first I want everyone to go to the theaters to watch “Cry Macho”! I hope to be able to share some of my other upcoming projects with you soon, but for now I hope audiences enjoy this wonderful film we made.

M: : OK fantastic, thank you for sharing that. And on a fun note, ending on something that is fun, you are a wine collector, when did that start? That is so cool. One of my best friends, if you ever get to New York, owns a restaurant that has over 1000 wines that you can select from.

FU: I love wine! We have great wine here in Chile, but it’s not so much that I collect it, rather I just love having a good glass of wine and sharing it with my family and friends.

M: And you know your palate. Can you make a recommendation to close on? Of a good wine?

FU: I will say that Miguel Torres is one of my favorites in terms of price and quality. Miguel Torres. Yeah that one definitely. It’s fair trade. There’s so many good things about it. It’s organic, has less sugar in it and it’s also inexpensive.

M: And I have to say that I’m on your side with it not costing a whole bunch, it is sometimes very good. Just because it’s expensive doesn’t make it a nice wine.

FU: Yes, the price and quality in Chile is amazing.

M: Well I have to tell you you’ve been such a delight to talk to. Thank you for taking the time, I’m really excited about your personal project and I’m sure it will be absolutely fantastic. Enjoy Chile and stay safe.

FU: Thank you so much.

Will you help us? unicefusa.org/wontstop

events

Diversity Awards 2021

Picnic on the Hudson River’ The ‘Moves Diversity Award’ is in recognition of, and to specifically pinpoint the role individual women leaders play in shaping and forming the next generation; highlighting the multiple benefits of diversity and the long term rewards of inclusivity in corporate and personal policies. How their energy, experience and expertise transforms today’s millennials into tomorrow’s executives...

Photographers: Nathan Heywood, Pablo Monsalve, Brittany Robey. Videograher: Christian Pena Event Production: Katherine Kohanowski, Charlotte Nunes

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The ‘Moves Diversity Awards Luncheon’ is part of the Moves Magazine’s event calendar which culminates in the annual Power Women Gala, our year-end celebration of 25 women who make a difference..

moves mentors

Diversity Awards 2021 The Moves Magazine team is excited to introduce our 2021 Diversity and Inclusion Event nominees, expanding our already impressive group of female mentors and diversity leaders; powerful and successful individuals who give back; leaders who encourage and augment the upward progress of young women in today’s world.

Aisha ThomasPetit Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer AMC Networks Charged with building on and advancing the company’s DEI goals and foundation she is a key member of the senior leadership team reporting directly to President & CEO, Josh Sapan, She is responsible for setting the strategy, roadmap and measures of success to develop, bolster, and retain a diverse and inclusive community both within the company’s workforce, as well as in front of and behind the camera across AMC Networks’ portfolio of entertainment brands.

Should mentoring be company-wide?

The spirit of mentoring and mentorship should be a practice embedded in how you operate as an organization and an important part of your culture. While it doesn’t have to be a requirement, nor does it always have to be formal, mentorship should be a part of a company’s culture. Anyone at any point in their career can be a mentor or a mentee. There’s always more to learn from someone else. At AMC Networks, we have programs with executives serving as mentors to employees at every level and we also have programs where some of our most senior leaders are mentored by early career employees on areas and skills they want to know more about.

Lt Col Kimberly Barr Commander, 318th Recruiting Squadron, USAF,

As the commander, she leads a highly skilled team of 79 recruiters and support personnel tasked with inspiring, engaging and recruit doctors nurses, dentists, allied health and line officers to meet annual Air Force requirements. Her zone covers 1.2-million-square-mile area of responsibility.

What makes a good mentor?

Sometimes, people have a path and they have the things that they did and the way they saw success, and they think that that is the way. That may not be the way for the person that you’re talking to! The things that are important to you, that set your course, that set your path, may not be the same things that are important to the person you are mentoring, so I think being a person that is genuinely caring about making their spaces better and caring about the people that they mentor and understanding that imparting what they’re learning can help others, but then also being open to learning themselves, makes a great mentor.

3

Col (ret.)

Mary Westmoreland President, Association of the United States Army*

A decorated combat veteran (serving in two branches of Military Service: US Coast Guard and US Army) she currently serves as the NYC Area Chair and NY State Vice Chair of the Department of Defense Employer Support to Guard and Reserve. She is President of the Association of the United States Army, *Greater New York City Statue of Liberty Chapter.

Should mentoring be a company-wide practice?

Training should be available to all new employees on a one on one or group affair.

Today much of it is on-line, however the Trainer should be available for questions and exchanges. Mentoring one on one, entails a more discrete handling, and further add to the challenge of

fitting in. Both require listeners. A policy encouraging senior employees to support efforts such as mentoring juniors when the opportunity arises is very helpful. Mandated mentoring including those not equipped to be a mentor, can prove to be a negative experience.

Rosa Nunez Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Foley Hoag

She is responsible for developing, implementing, leading and championing proactive diversity and inclusion initiatives and programs, in alignment with Foley Hoag’s overall strategic plans. Rosa is also co-chair the firm’s Diversity , Equity & Inclusion Committee.

How does mentoring benefit the mentor?

In my opinion, mentoring benefits the mentor across multiple levels, professionally, intellectually, spiritually, and socially. Being able to help someone achieve their goals by leaving a positive mark on their journey is highly fulfilling.

Knowing that my advice,

efforts (big or small) influenced someone’s future gives me purpose and fulfills my soul. I also believe mentoring is a twoway street; just as I mentor my mentees, they get to mentor me. We learn from one another, and they help me continue to develop as a leader.

Emily Graham Chief Equity & Impact Officer Omnicom

She leads the OPEN Leadership Team, a group of Diversity & Inclusion strategists dedicated full-time to providing structure, support,counsel and visibility to DE&I initiatives and policies throughout Omnicom’s 1,500 agencies, helping the group leverage its expertise to advise clients and internal teams globally on DE&I matters.

What makes a mentor?

First of all you have to be experienced deeply in life. There must be things that you are willing to be vulnerable about in sharing and be free about allowing those experiences to be somebody else’s guide. And all people aren’t comfortable doing that. For mentorship comes from a deep place of their vulnerability, I think, and an invested interest in a person’s navigation and success. I think one of the only ways you can truly mentor is by not being selfish with sharing your experiences.

Djuana Beamon Chief Diversity Officer, Peoples United Bank As a seasoned diversity practitioner with more than 20 years experience in various business capacities, she is experienced in leading D&I strategies for organizations to find new ways to enhance their cultures and celebrate our unique differences and collective similarities.

How does diversity play into mentorship?

I would say that mentorship plays a huge role in increasing diversity. When you have leaders and allies who are willing to take on the role of mentors, especially for someone of a different gender, racial/ethnic group, sexual orientation, ability, etc., that can help to level the playing field and identify talent that might normally get lost in the organization.

Dawn Frazier-Bohnert

EVP, Global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer, Liberty Mutual Insurance Dawn is responsible for leading the design, development and implementation of Liberty Mutual’s diversity, equity and inclusion strategy and programs. This includes enhancing employees’ DE&I capability and skills, internal and external communications, metrics and measurements, benchmarking, external partnerships and the development of employee resource groups.

Should mentoring be part of the corporate plan?

Absolutely. A corporate mentorship program can create a strong and diverse workforce, which can lead a business to new stages of growth and stability. This is because it impacts the development of new leaders, can increase diversity, and effects employee retention, which all ultimately influence bottom lines. It is a worthy investment that should be considered by every company that wants to create a strong brand. At Liberty Mutual, we have multiple mentorship opportunities for performance and development. All of our programs are shared with the board annually.

Nicole Leon Director, Office of Diversity & Inclusion, ConEdison She is entrusted with providing leadership and support in the areas of diversity, equity and inclusion, and affirmative action, as well as ensuring compliance with anti-discrimination laws and EEO policies. She is also responsible for the development and mobilization of the corporate Diversity, Equity & Inclusion strategy.

What is the number one action we can take to empower women?

What is the number one action we can take to empower women?It’s about us speaking up for ourselves and on behalf of other women.

It’s about us supporting each other as women at work where we’re not in competition, we’re not here to tear each other down. There’s a quote I saw the other day and it says “surround yourself with a group of women who would mention your name in a room full of opportunity”. And for me that’s the price of admission as a female leader. As a woman, if I see another woman, I need to affirm you and uplift you and say hey you look great or simply good morning or how are you today – is there anything you need. So it starts with us supporting each other working together to change those things that we may see as barriers.

Deeanne King

EVP & Chief Human Resources Officer T-Mobile

As the top people person, she not only recruits the best and the brightest talent, but makes sure employees flourish in T-Mobile’s famous Uncarrier culture. Bringing more than 32 years of experience in senior leadership roles across multiple functions, she is a strong advocate for employee learning and development.

Can mentoring significantly effect equality and diversity in the workplace?

Yes! Strong mentors can boost their mentees within a company by teaching, coaching, and by introducing them to others, recommending them for projects and such. I believe that female leaders have a moral responsibility to grow more female leaders – and they are selfish if they don’t. I take this very seriously myself. As we talk about in our company values, we must do it the right way, always.

Photographers: Tony Gale, Travis Keyes Stylist: Jorge Morales. Makeup: Sisley Paris: Cat, Heidi Serrano Cecile Nida. Hair: Li Murillo Location: 25 Broad Street, Penthouse 2a, New York, 10004

CONGRATULATIONS

AISHA THOMASPETIT

AND ALL THE 2021 MOVES MAGAZINE MENTOR AWARD HONOREES

Rosa Nuñez Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Foley Hoag congratulates Rosa Nuñez, recipient of the 2021 New York Moves Mentor Diversity Leadership Award www.foleyhoag.com

There’s Only One Thing That’s Unique About Djuana Beamon.

Everything.

As an industry leader, Djuana consistently demonstrates experience and expertise in shaping and forming the next generation. There’s only one Djuana Beamon, and we couldn’t be more proud to have her leading our company in diversity and inclusion. Congratulations on being named a 2021 Moves Mentor!

At People’s United Bank we take pride in being leaders in the communities where we live and work. We value our customers and employees and encourage an environment of equity and inclusion. This includes having women in leadership, women working together and expanding opportunities for female employees and future leaders.

©2021 People’s United Bank, N.A. | Member FDIC

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