#Best hair clippers for men"

[onefite]

Top Benefits of Using YiLFo Hair Clippers for Men

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[truththebarberartist]

I remember the very first time I tried to do a fade. It was roughly around 30 years ago and all I did was try to copy my Barbers moves. I thought I was nice because I was cutting with scissors for three years prior to that so I called my boy up and started trying to do his fade with only a zero and a taper comb.. It wasn’t very faded at all. My boy wanted to kill me for all the patches I left in his head. He called me every curse name in the book. I had to cut all his hair off bald and when his mother saw him she started calling him Kojak... I was frustrated but I didn’t give up. Just to remind you back when I was a barber kid we didn’t have any half guards. We learned how to do that part by lifting the back of the blades a certain degree to give you the blend you needed. Some clippers didn’t even have levers yet.. With today’s technology and advancements I’m surprised these clippers don’t talk to you while you’re cutting. Give Babyliss time 😂.. Still to this day I have former students that message me and ask how can I improve on my fades? First thing I tell them is you must have a system down packed. Memorize your steps then give yourself time. Try different techniques, experiment with different types of fades. Experience is one of the best teachers. Many young barbers use the word “scared” when telling me why they don’t want to try a new technique. “I’m scared to mess people up” they say. Remember that some of the best in the business started in that same exact place and overcame all their fears over time.. One of my favorite quotes is from the great ancient warrior “Achilles”.... Before one of his greatest battles A child told him he was about to fight one of the biggest men that he has ever seen and that he wouldn’t want to fight him. Achilles then said “Thats why no one will remember your name.”💯💯 www.youtube.com/c/TruthTheBarberArtist @truththebarberartist @tht_podcast SUBSCRIBE TO MY PODCAST: THE WHOLE TRUTH PODCAST/ ITUNES #itsnoteasybeingabarber #barberlife #truththebarberartist #comedian #funnyvideos #explorerpage #truth #motivation #barbers #fade #haircut #funnystories #memories #teacher (at New York, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/By-P7KigF1p/?igshid=18ocu9baayszj

[thisismyhellx]

All of themsssssss

1: Name: Elizabeth

2: Age: 25

3: 3 Fears: Failure, Being replaced, Never good enough

4: 3 things I love: Artsy Shit, Working, Reading(When I can)

5: 4 turns on: Intimacy on a mental level, Choking, Submissiveness(when applicable), soft kisses on tender areas.

6: 4 turns off: Cocky, Entitled, “Fuck and Chuck”, Not respecting me.

7: My best friend: I have more than one; Michele, Heather, Kayla, Stacy and Brandon

8: Sexual orientation: Swirly.

9: My best first date: Meh.

10: How tall am I: 5′6″

11: What do I miss: Not feeling tired.

12: What time were I born: 4am? Fuck if I know

13: Favorite color: Blue, or color combos Electric blue/hot pink

14: Do I have a crush: Yes

15: Favorite quote: 

It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

16: Favorite place: Under the stars

17: Favorite food: Italian, Chinese

18: Do I use sarcasm: Really?

19: What am I listening to right now: Advertisements

20: First thing I notice in new person: Aura

21: Shoe size: 7.5/8

22: Eye color: Blue

23: Hair color; Natural? Brunette, Current? Blue.

24: Favorite style of clothing: Huh?

25: Ever done a prank call? When I was younger

27: Meaning behind my URL: This is my hell....?

28: Favorite movie: Don't make me choose.

29: Favorite song: Depends on the day.

30: Favorite band: I REFUSE TO CHOOSE.

31: How I feel right now: Sickly

32: Someone I love: My family.

33: My current relationship status: Taken

34: My relationship with my parents: Biological? Different than most.

35: Favorite holiday: Halloween

36: Tattoos and piercing i have: Not sure how many ear piercings I have other than my main ones that are 0g. I have 3 tattoos.

37: Tattoos and piercing i want: A lot

38: The reason I joined Tumblr: Senior in HS looking for an outlet.

39: Do I and my last ex hate each other? I should. I don't know what he thinks nor do I care.

40: Do I ever get “good morning” or “good night ” texts? Not usually.

41: Have I ever kissed the last person you texted? Nope

42: When did I last hold hands?  For work or pleasure cause the latter has been a minute.

43: How long does it take me to get ready in the morning? Depends on where I’m going, but normally between 10-30 mins.

44: Have You shaved your legs in the past three days? Nope... >_

45: Where am I right now? Work.

46: If I were drunk & can’t stand, who’s taking care of me? Probably my drunk ass.

47: Do I like my music loud or at a reasonable level? Depends on my mood.

48: Do I live with my Mom and Dad? Neither

49: Am I excited for anything? BEDTIME

50: Do I have someone of the opposite sex I can tell everything to? Yes

51: How often do I wear a fake smile? Majority.

52: When was the last time I hugged someone? Today

53: What if the last person I kissed was kissing someone else right in front of me? My heart... it wouldn't feel good..

54: Is there anyone I trust even though I should not? Most likely.

55: What is something I disliked about today? Yes.. mostly Im cold...

56: If I could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be? I really have little desire to meet someone? Iunno. Where’s my sugar daddy! (Maybe could meet Frank Iero though...)

57: What do I think about most? Everything at once or nothing at all.

58: What’s my strangest talent? I can crack my big toes unlimited times.

59: Do I have any strange phobias? Nail Clippers.

60: Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it? Behind

61: What was the last lie I told? “I’m just tired”

62: Do I prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online? Neither

63: Do I believe in ghosts? How about aliens? Both but ghosts hardcore

64: Do I believe in magic? Absolutely.

65: Do I believe in luck? Yes

66: What’s the weather like right now? Raining and cold

67: What was the last book I’ve read? “Tennyson” by Leslie M M Blume

68: Do I like the smell of gasoline? Love it

69: Do I have any nicknames? Liz, Izzy, Awalabash, Blue

70: What was the worst injury I’ve ever had? Im not sure I’ve actually had an “injury”, but my knees are definitely shit.

71: Do I spend money or save it? Save, unless I HAVE to have it.

72: Can I touch my nose with a tongue? Nope

73: Is there anything pink in 10 feet from me? Yes my tervis

74: Favorite animal? Cats. any cats.

75: What was I doing last night at 12 AM? Working

76: What do I think is Satan’s last name is? Didn't know he had one.

77: What’s a song that always makes me happy when I hear it? Always is a strong word, but want me to race down the highway? KICKSTART MY HEART; MOTLEY CRUE. Want me to feel things? “Would you love a monster man?”; Lordi, want me to sing my heart out? Basically anything throwback to HS or ANYTHING Panic! ATD I could go on...

78: How can you win my heart? Its really hard to win my heart, but once I fall, I fall hard. I love immensely and its dangerous.

79: What would I want to be written on my tombstone? Don't really want to fucking think about it.

80: What is my favorite word? Clusterfuck

81: My top 5 blogs on tumblr: According to tumblr? @stayfree86, @iampikachuhearmeroar, @dailyhangover, @kiddysa-bunnpire, @belovedgoofball

82: If the whole world were listening to me right now, what would I say? The world needs to be kinder...

83: Do I have any relatives in jail? Not that I know of.

84: I accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow me with the super-power of my choice! What is that power? Invisibility.

85: What would be a question I’d be afraid to tell the truth on? ....

86: What is my current desktop picture? Stock

87: Had sex? yep.

88: Bought condoms? Yes

89: Gotten pregnant? Nope

90: Failed a class? Yes

91: Kissed a boy? Yes

92: Kissed a girl? Yes

93: Have I ever kissed somebody in the rain? Kind of.. not magically like...

94: Had job? Multiple

95: Left the house without my wallet? Yes

96: Bullied someone on the internet? Never

97: Had sex in public? No

98: Played on a sports team? Yes

99: Smoked weed? A lot, not anymore

100: Did drugs? Never

101: Smoked cigarettes? My vice.

102: Drank alcohol? Yes

103: Am I a vegetarian/vegan? Nope

104: Been overweight? My dad says I am.

105: Been underweight? In high school.

106: Been to a wedding? Yes

107: Been on the computer for 5 hours straight? Yes

108: Watched TV for 5 hours straight? Yes

109: Been outside my home country? Twice

110: Gotten my heart broken? Of course.

111: Been to a professional sports game? Yes

112: Broken a bone? No

113: Cut myself? Yes...

114: Been to prom? Yes

115: Been in airplane? Yes

116: Fly by helicopter? No

117: What concerts have I been to? Insane Clown Posse, Slipknot/Marilyn Manson/Of Mice and Men, David Allen Coe

118: Had a crush on someone of the same sex? Yes

119: Learned another language? Sort of

120: Wore make up? Yes

121: Lost my virginity before I was 18? Yes (15)

122: Had oral sex? Yes

123: Dyed my hair? Yes

124: Voted in a presidential election? Yes

125: Rode in an ambulance? Not that I know of

126: Had a surgery? A few

127: Met someone famous? Not really?

128: Stalked someone on a social network? yep

129: Peed outside? Duh

130: Been fishing? Duh

131: Helped with charity? Donated

132: Been rejected by a crush? Yup.

133: Broken a mirror? Yes

134: What do I want for birthday? My birthday isn't special.

[chocopalustre]

are U interested in reading my final paper for a course on Queer Literature and Theory? do u like lesbians? are u curious about lesbian sexuality in pornography? do u need a good sassy laugh?

look no further than right under this cut!!!

Content Warning: This essay contains sensitive content discussing sexually explicit material.

Tribadism: Lesbian Bump and Grinding. (Definition courtesy of Urban Dictionary)

“Hey, Kylee, how do lesbians have sex?” I pause for a moment, trying desperately not to roll my eyes. With a deadpan expression, I hold up two victory signs with my fingers and mash them together. “We scissor each other, of course.” I let a few seconds pass, taking in their look of bewilderment, before I crack a sardonic smile. I was joking of course. Every good lesbian knows that scissoring isn’t actually a real thing. Scissoring is what straight men think they see women doing in lesbian porn, opening their legs and criss-crossing them together in a cutting motion. Fake lesbians scissor. Sophisticated lesbians trib.

Of course, it took me a while to learn this. Like many other queer youth, I struggled to squeeze out any information in regard to lesbian sex out of the public sex education system. What choice did I have but to stumble across some poorly-made erotic content on the Internet? (Many choices, in fact, but I didn’t know that then.) Much of my knowledge about how two women have sex together without a man initially came from this exploration, shortsighted and misrepresented as it was. But now that I am a Real Adult Lesbian, I am interested in Real Adult Lesbian Sex. As such, I want to move beyond the question of what lesbian sex is and instead examine how pornographic sex represents the lesbian community. What better way to explore this idea than to return to my original Sapphic-inclined childhood investigation… porn on the Internet!

I was a naïve child, so of course I didn’t know that the lesbian porn I was viewing has a specific name: Ersatz porn. Ersatz porn is the term used to describe “girl-on-girl” pornography made by the straight man, for the straight man. And it is this porn that inflames the hearts of indignant female feminists everywhere, including my own. So imagine my surprise upon discovering that sometimes these fake lezzys fueled a fire in my loins as well. How was I supposed to reconcile this?

The 3 P’s: Penetration, Pleasure, and Pussy Shots

Everything I hate about lesbian porn made for men’s consumption comes to the tip of my tongue instantly- pun not intended. First, there are the fingernails. Every performer has an obscenely long, pointed, hot pink $40 set of acrylics. If you buy into the longstanding and dodgy myth of nail length indicating whether a woman is gay, then the 1-inch kitty claws on the screen in front of you are a dead giveaway: She isn’t a lesbian, and the girl she’s fucking isn’t enjoying it. I myself have a love-hate relationship with the nail clipper, often keeping my nails longer (a reasonable length, of course), but I can definitively say that the prospect of somebody scratching up my vulva with those talons, pretending it’s pleasurable… Needless to say, not my kind of thing. Unfortunately, these pricey manicures are least of our worries.

Ersatz porn has only one audience in mind: Men. And every straight man knows that women, lesbian or not, just want a dick. This isn’t about her pleasure, it’s about his. And by involving aggressive sucking and fucking with a strap-on, the male viewer can identify with the woman wearing it on screen. Her purpose is to simply act as a placeholder for a male body. For some odd reason, men still seem to think that women easily get off on penetration alone, so it’s not surprising that there is little clitoral stimulation in girl-on-girl porn. These poor guys don’t know any better. But us lesbians know the truth: The clit is the shit. Dildos and vibes all have their place in the bedroom for dykes, but the end-goal of it all is arousal and orgasm, not a penis. Unfortunately, the sole attention on penetration means that the best these pseudo-lesbians can get are pseudo-orgasms (not that many viewers would be able to tell the difference).

I was happy to discover that I am not the only one curious about other queer women’s take on “lesbian” porn; in an exploratory experiment performed by Todd Morrison and Dani Tallack, a small group of lesbian and bisexual women were interviewed after viewing scenes from both Ersatz porn and lesbian-created lesbian porn. They discussed what they saw the films representing in terms of lesbian identity. Viewers noted that the women having sex in the girl-on-girl scenes didn’t appear to enjoy it at all; there was no genuine emotion nor any interest in pleasing one another. One viewer remarked, “Yeah, this didn’t look very physical … She could have been reading the paper while the girl was banging her.” When one girl fingers or goes down on her partner, she rarely looks up to make eye contact. It’s all very detached, and the pained expressions on their faces accompanied by high pitched whines seem less like the result of a good fucking and more of a “God when the hell is this gonna be over” response.

The male gaze is all about those close-up shots of the genitalia, which is sort of confusing to me because as much as they want to see it, they don’t seem to worship our labia as much as their local dyke does. The objectification and exploitation of the female body is at work, a key instrument in the misogynistic toolbox designed specifically for mainstream heteronormative pornographic orgasms. Let’s pull out the hammer then, shall we? Our good friend penetration makes yet another appearance, often combining hardcore fucking with restraint practices—whether it’s steel handcuffs or a rough pair of hands clenched tightly around wrists. In and out, in and out, we see the pink dildo pounding into a pussy, and rarely does the camera stray from this scene to her face, essentially detaching female pleasure from the action of penetration. She is reduced to an object in which the only use is a hole to be fucked. The penetrator then forces the body below her to slobber and choke all over the dildo, hissing out abusive and demeaning remarks: “Your dirty little fucking pussy likes to take this big fucking cock, doesn’t it? Dirty little slut.”

Pornhub gratuitously offers up tons of content like this. Just look at “TSA Agents Engage in Lesbian BDSM! (Part 2).” (Don’t worry, I took the liberty of analyzing the scene to pull out its most ridiculous parts so you don’t have to.) Here we have a busty blonde TSA agent watching two naked women sixty-nine on a table with a bright light shining down on them… very reminiscent of a visit to the doctor’s office—minus the sex.[1] The blonde doesn’t engage in any physical contact while the other two are going at it and instead looks on with a forced smile of pleasure. Then we have the painfully slow zoom in on the JUICY WET PUSSY. There was also a gun involved, just in case you forgot this was porn made for men; nothing screams heterosexual masculinity like pointing an armed weapon at a woman’s head while you fuck her. And finally, how could we forget the infamous double dildo scene? It’s very important to show that every hole is filled by a phallus. If we zoom our male gaze out a bit to take in the whole body, I fear what we see is not much better than these money shots.

Being Butch and BDSM

Let me just lay this on the table now: I am a hyper-feminine queer woman. I am all too familiar with comments like, “But you’re so pretty?!” or “I never would have guessed…” when a straight person finds out that, yes, I am in fact queer as fuck. My love for glitter, killer eyeliner, and an overall hatred of pants puts me at the unwanted mercy of male attention. Even among the queer community, I feel the need to loudly announce my presence; I’m here, I’m queer, and you can shove your misguided compliments on my “straight” appearance right up your ass. One would think then that I enjoy the performers in mainstream porn, that I would laud them for actively combating femme invisibility. The problem is that a) because of this “representation” men think feminine-appearing lesbians are really just college chicks experimenting and having threesomes before running into the muscular arms of someone with a real penis and b) it simply doesn’t turn me on. Where are the butch ladies? Perhaps my biggest beef with Ersatz porn is that I feel it actually does a disservice to representing lesbians, even my fellow femmes. Representation is only good if it is appropriately and accurately diverse, and Ersatz porn is decidedly not. Sure, the hair color may change and maybe one of them has double Ds while the other has Cs, but other than that… Femmes aren’t flat and they’re certainly not fat.

Returning to the interviews, the participants noted that the bodies in Ersatz porn reflected society’s expectation for straight women, even if they were supposed to be lesbians. Even more unsettling, the performers look less like women and more like girls. Straight men seem to think that college freshmen have the time, energy, and money to maintain a perfectly hairless physique. To loosely quote the response of a previous professor of mine to a male partner who wanted her pubic hair shaved: “Why? Do you like to fuck little girls?” Proportionally, their appearances are reminiscent of the old school Barbie doll: slim waist, young face, and huge boobs. Women, lesbian or otherwise, come in all different shapes and sizes, but it seems that these straight male viewers have yet to catch on to that. Difficult enough is it to accept that two women can get sexual satisfaction without a man, they’ll be damned if she’s fat or has short cropped hair! The performers’ bodies appear to be the biggest difference between mainstream lesbian porn and porn produced and made specifically for queer women.

There is one specific butch body that comes to mind within the mainstream sphere, however: Lily Cade. Now, I have my own gripes with Cosmopolitan magazine. Their advice essentially boils down to “here’s why you’re single and sad, so let us show you how to be sexy in order to catch a man and fulfill your meaning in life!” Any articles that mention identities outside the normative are riddled with misinformation and operate only as a way to clickbait intersectional feminists into reading them. Needless to say, my initial reaction to their article titled “What It’s Really Like to Be a Lesbian Porn Star” was dismissive at best. However, upon looking at the photo of the petite, jean jacket-wearing woman with choppy ginger hair and heavily lined eyes underneath the title, I knew I recognized her and couldn’t resist giving the article a read. (Like I said, fucking clickbait.) Cosmo names Lily Cade the exception to the rule that most girl-on-girl porn stars are actually straight. Before her career really kicked off, Cade described herself as a butchy lesbian with a little bit of baby fat. She struggled to convince directors to give her a chance because her appearance didn’t fit what mainstream porn was selling. Cade then lost 40 pounds, got a tan, and revamped her sexy lingerie in order to break through the business. So how does a real dyke feel producing Ersatz porn?

Cade admits that sparking chemistry on set with the straight women she performs with is one of the most difficult parts of her job. Interestingly enough, Cade criticizes girl-on-girl porn because it’s not meant for female viewers, that the overall the performance is “fake on every level.” Although she weaseled her way into the business by adjusting her look, she doesn’t necessarily think that she performs the way that everybody else in Ersatz porn does. Cade strives for authenticity; she makes an effort to connect with the women so that they can perform a real sex scene. Cade comments, “You don’t have to make love to me, you don’t have to even touch me. Just let me fuck you, and I’ll get you off, and you’ll like it.” But how is it that a lesbian performer can engage in the content she criticizes? Indeed, this is a point of contention for many people involved in queer porn. Lily Cade has come to acquire the label of “sell-out” among the queer underbelly of the mainstream. The changes Cade made that brought her success in the mainstream industry only resulted in derision in the realm of queer pornography. Already a sort of niche business, Indie queer pornographers could have used another butch body to represent and pleasure us lesbians out here. To turn your back on your community and play pretend for the straight team? Unthinkable. Worse yet is the fact that, of all venues, her outlet for public exposure was Cosmo magazine.

But who are we to say that Cade isn’t having authentic sex? After all, she is still a lesbian. And her attitude toward her work certainly seems gay to me; she maintains a high level of enthusiasm and a devotion to performing sex with her female colleagues. For the lesbians that do stumble across her work within the mainstream sphere, Cade is putting out content that is more accessible and relatable for them. Her apparent conformity does not mean she is suddenly no longer a queer woman. In response to criticisms, Cade says that she’s “chosen to create a look that is accessible to a more mainstream audience, but is undeniably a lesbian look… I don’t see myself as a sell-out; I see myself as subversive.” And to all of the straight male viewers of her work, Lily Cade has a message: “I’m showing them how a real dyke does it.”

When the butches do come out to play, they star disproportionately in the BDSM genre, especially in mainstream porn. So even though I want to see the bodies I’m attracted to, I’m caught in a catch-22 situation: Yes, the butches exist, but often only in circumstances involving extreme violence and submission. That isn’t to say that BDSM isn’t arousing. In fact, BDSM relies on domination, bondage, sadism, and masochism as a turn-on for viewers. What I’ve found, though, is that in mainstream porn BDSM is performed in a male heterosexual context rather than a lesbian context. Another Pornhub gem, “Strapon Women Who Fuck Better Than Men – 5,” exemplifies this concept. The video is a thirty-minute compilation of strap-on fucking with butch women doing most of the labor. The content and title combined appear to give us lesbians the recognition we deserve. However, it opens with a quote: “By far, one of the most popular fantasies women have is being the man for one night, literally. That’s right, I’m referring to a strap on penis.” In wearing this sex toy, a lesbian is suddenly transformed into a heterosexual man; it’s clear that the butch body still acts less as a queer woman and more as the placeholder for the male viewer.

Abuse and objectification of the female body also is heightened to suit the male gaze. Hair is pulled violently back as she extends one of her legs straight in the air so that our view of the dick is not obscured. It does not matter that these inorganic, acrobatic positions are not pleasurable nor conducive to sex; penetration and the role of the penis is the primary focus. There is little clitoral stimulation involved, the scenes are rough and more demanding than pleasurable, and the strap-on is glorified as the Sub is made to perform a blowjob for the Dom.[2] Finally, one of my personal favorite scenes—a long-haired femme being pounded against a weight rack, her tennis shoes still on. How did she get her clothes off without taking those bulky sneakers off? It doesn’t matter, these women are making gains at the gym, appealing to the Frat boy’s favorite pasttime. In the end, it seems you have two options to choose from when it comes to Ersatz porn: Watch a threesome between Sorority girls experimenting with lesbian sex for the first time through a hazing ritual, or watch a (still pretty feminine) butch relentlessly subjugate a dubiously consenting hyper-feminine girl and not even pretend to enjoy it.

Advertising and Authentic Arousal

Obviously, then, queer porn is much better at depicting authentic lesbian relationships than Ersatz porn… Or is it? My knee-jerk response would be to let out a loud, defiant YES! OF COURSE IT IS! It’s far easier to find what you are into when perusing the realm of queer porn—even if getting access to it is much more difficult in the first place. Unlike mainstream lesbian porn, which you can find in abundance uploaded on sites like Pornhub or xHamster, queer-produced porn often does not find its way out beyond access to those who pay for it. But when you do find it, you’ve hit the Sapphic jackpot. Performers vary from the familiar femmes to chubby dykes, from chapsticks to stone butches and trans women. The scenes are often more believable because of the bodies in them; they are diverse and range in size, echoing many a lady-lover’s desire to appreciate all parts of all women. The women in Morrison’s study noted that the performers were often much older, “not like they had pubic hair a week ago,” and that “they had marks on their bodies, like stretch marks and stuff. They weren’t perfect.” Not only do the bodies reflect a diverse array of lesbians in terms of style and age, they are also more realistic because of their “imperfections.” These are the same flaws that are quickly airbrushed and implanted away in the mainstream sphere. However, nail length still seemed to be an issue, and what the women lacked in a perfect figure they made up for with the heavy use of makeup, accessories, and perfect hairdos. It seems that no matter who it’s for, pornography still has a certain aesthetic of ideal beauty to maintain.[3]

Bodies aside, what about content? When a butch straps on a dildo and fucks her hot femme girlfriend, are the underlying themes really so different from Ersatz porn? Even in queer porn, it appears that the strict gender binary has its place. Unfortunately, no matter how exclusive the lesbian club may be, societal expectations of gender roles and expression still exert themselves full force on our bodies. Yet somehow, as queer women, we proclaim that this is still what real lesbian sex is. Whether or not it resembles heterosexual sex is not the point or purpose; the fact of the matter is that these are queer bodies performing queer sex. Theoretically, it does not rely on misogyny the way that porn for heterosexual men does. The performers engage in a subversive and empowering scene where they reclaim their right to their bodies and their sex lives. They are performing with their fellow lesbians in mind, not acting for a male gaze.

When examining how porn produced by lesbian women is advertised for consumers, one thing becomes very clear: We want real sex. In order to draw in their demographic, many queer pornography sites capitalize on the idea of authenticity. A few catchphrases used by CyberDyke.net include: “We depict the sex the way people really have it.” “real fantasies / real orgasms / real lust / real butches / real bodies / real sex.” Well fuck, the site has me sold! I would take CyberDyke’s “porn aimed at real women and lesbians” over Lesbian Cheerleader Squad 2 any day. How do I know that those lesbians are fake? Well, I don’t, really, but I’ve never seen porn aimed at straight men claim that the women are Real Lesbians. Mainstream pornography doesn’t need to affirm the sexualities of their performers because men don’t really care about authentic representation. A title with “TWO HOT WOMEN” in it is just enough and the Kleenex are out. Women wouldn’t be watching their porn, anyways, so what does it matter? Perhaps queer porn is not showing us reality, but rather performing “a fantasy of authenticity.” Pornography is essentially a visual fantasy, and we lesbians dream about a world in which our identities are valid, every woman loves us back, and men aren’t around to fuck it up and exploit our desires. It is that illusion of authenticity which gives queer lesbian porn its allure.

It may come as a surprise to learn that not all lesbians necessarily agree that queer porn is the better porn. Authenticity, it seems, has to do with much more than just a body. In a different set of interviews conducted by Valerie Webber, non-heterosexual women who performed lesbian porn made for men were asked to discuss how their performance related to their sexual orientation. It turns out that many did not believe that they were performing “fake” sex, rather simply adjusting their actions to capture and create what the audience needed. Performing with a woman who was also lesbian-identified did not immediately make the scene the performer’s real sex life, and most agreed that the line between their work and authentic sex was not so clearly defined.

Despite the many quarrels we have with Ersatz porn, lesbian-created lesbian pornography cannot escape our critical eye either. Emotional intimacy makes sex appear authentic; when both women are clearly into each other (not giving weird sultry looks in the male viewer’s camera’s direction), I’m much more likely to be aroused. But intimacy quickly strays into mushy romance in lesbian-created porn. The stereotype that women are more sensual and emotive and thus lesbian relationships would maximize on romantic, loving sexual activity is a key point of criticism in queer porn. I, for one, resent the assumption that any sex I have will be vanilla by default. Some viewers admitted to preferring scenes from Ersatz porn; one remarked that the lesbian-created scene “was completely… boring in every way. The music was boring, the women were boring, the scene was boring, the colors were boring, the film was boring, the camera stayed stationary for Christ’s sake. It was boring.”[4] Another admitted, “Um, you guys are going to think I’m a bad lesbian, but I really like the penetration. It’s hot.” Bad Lesbian Club rejoice! Her guilt echoed my own anxiety at my arousal by certain girl-on-girl porn scenes. But clearly not every dyke is into the same thing, and even content produced by queer creators can fall prey to harmful stereotypes.

Not all lesbian porn is quite so corny, of course. Vanilla can be a pleasant no doubt, but as one viewer noted, “Let’s get it really raunchy sometime.” When some of us come out of the closet, we bring along some of our more hardcore desires—whips, sturdy ropes, ball gags, and leather collars. BDSM has long played a role in the lesbian community, and its prominence in lesbian-created pornography adds to the supposed authenticity of the performance. However, as Julie Levin Russo points out in her article, “’The Real Thing’: Reframing Queer Pornography for Virtual Spaces,” it is the “mobilization of recognizable markers of dyke subculture (e.g. butch bodies, tattoos and piercings, fetish attire)” that feed into stereotypes about what being a lesbian is really like. Needless to say, not all queer women participate in or identify with these things. Although butch bodies help clue viewers into what porn is made for them, their representation is still almost exclusively present in the realm of BDSM. Themes of dominance are associated with masculinity, thus reflected in butch-heavy scenes of punishment and orgasm denial. After assessing my pleasure at certain penetration scenes in girl-on-girl porn, now I must question why I can so easily accept porn as made for my fellow lesbians through the mere presence of a butch body. It may seem more authentic to me, but for other queer women, perhaps the message they’re receiving is that certain characteristics—both in your relationship and your physical appearance—must be present in order to be real lesbian.

Reaching the Climax

Some would say that the question of authenticity is irrelevant because the purpose of pornography is to reflect viewers’ fantasies. How necessary is it to be real lesbians having sex? Why does it matter if most people can’t do the splits while they’re being eaten out? But without giving genuine thought to the performers and scenes you show, you run the risk of spreading misinformation about lesbians. Our existence cannot be denied, and failing to consider the impact of homogeneity in porn does a disservice to our very real livelihoods. The ruling is not decisive among women, queer or otherwise, as to which type of pornography is better or worse. My idea of what good porn is does not always match the reality of many queer women in the world; everybody has a different dynamic within their relationship, after all. Ultimately, though, there are definitely some things I could live without. (I’m glaring back at you, male gaze.)

[1] Doctor settings are actually quite a common scene in mainstream porn; straight men seem to have this idea that going to the gynecologist is hot. Because having my OBGYN shove a speculum up my vaginal canal is totally a turn-on, right?

[2] I’m still not sure how either party would get any personal pleasure out of choking on a silicone cock… but then again, butches are really just women who want to be men, remember?

[3] It’s not like we sweat during sex or accidentally choke on our girlfriend’s perfectly curled hair or anything.

[4] A 70-minute sex film set to classical music with zero dialogue wouldn’t be particular titillating for me, either.

Works Cited

Morrison, Todd G. and Dani Tallack. “Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Interpretations of Lesbian and Ersatz Lesbian Pornography.” Sexuality & Culture, vol. 9, no. 2, Spring2005, pp. 3-30.

Russo, Julie Levin. “‘The Real Thing’: Reframing Queer Pornography for Virtual Spaces.” In Jacobs, Katrien & Janssen, Marije & Pasquinelli, Matteo. “C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader.” Jan. 2007.

“Strapon Women Who Fuck Better Than Men – 5.” Pornhub, 2016, https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph577e65b319a02.

“TSA Agents Engage in Lesbian BDSM! (Part 2).” Pornhub, October 2017, https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph59ccece3078ca.

Webber, Valerie. “Shades of Gay: Performance of Girl-On-Girl Pornography and Mobile Authenticities.” Sexualities, vol. 16, no. 1/2, Jan. 2013, pp. 217-235.

Wischhover, Cheryl. “What It’s Really Like to Be a Lesbian Porn Star.” Cosmopolitan. 2 Mar. 2016.

[barberjourney-blog]

Let’s start from the beginning...

     Well here goes. My first attempt at blogging. That is, unless you count the occasional snarky comment on Facebook or that week in college I tried to do Xanga. Why a blog you might ask? Well, I’ve always considered myself a better communicator through the written word. I come from a family of writers. My sister is an editor for a publishing company. My mom’s list of published works include short stories, magazine articles, and children’s Sunday School curriculum. Even my dad has been known to pen a witty sonnet (usually on the topic of what he cooked for dinner or an embellished fishing trip story). So I guess writing is a family tradition. And although I haven’t practiced the skill in quite a while, it’s always been something I’ve rather enjoyed. I think it’s the organization that I like. Sometimes when I speak, my words get ahead of my thoughts, but not so with writing. Writing is more controlled. I’m able to key a thought, then read it and process it. If I don’t like what I’ve said, that backspace click is just a few finger strokes up. 

      I’m one paragraph in and already rambling. Forgive me. Let’s get to the point of this thing.

     If you’ve followed my Instagram over the last couple of years, you may have noticed a trend in my posts. I’ve visited a lot of barbershops over the last 2 years. A LOT. I‘ve lost count of the exact number a while back, but I’d estimate I’ve seen 20+ shops over the last 12 months. I’ve visited shops in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, Birmingham, Huntsville, Tuscaloosa, and Gulf Shores just to name a few. Now, I’m not talking about the salon where your mom goes. Or Sports Clips. I’m talking about the good old fashioned men’s barbershop. The kind of shop maybe you’ve only seen in movies. Men sitting around the shop discussing sports, politics, family, and life. Maybe some good tunes on the radio and the aroma of a hot cup of joe wafting through the air. And a skilled, seasoned barber honing his craft at the chair. His hands are surgical and his gift with the clippers, comb, and shears are a unique combination of skill and art.

     These shops fascinate me! I love the freedom men feel at these places. The freedom to unwind, be themselves, and speak their minds. I I love the way a good hair cut makes me feel. Confident and put together. I love the nostalgia I feel while I’m there. Reminiscent of a different time when the world was smaller, things moved slower, and people cared about each other. I guess you could say I love everything about them.

     A few shops I’ve visited, researched, and loved over the last 2 years...

Greasy Hands Barbershop - Florence, AL 

The Commodore Tonsorial Parlor - Atlanta, GA 

Scout’s Barbershop - Nashville, TN 

Shed Barber & Supply - Austin, TX 

     Let’s hit pause here and rewind the tape a little (for those of you 18 and under reading this, ask your parents what rewind the tape means).  In 2008, Shannon and I moved from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham and almost immediately began attending The Church at Brookhills. We knew after the first week the Lord was moving in this church and He was going to move within us as well if we got onboard. We joined the church, got plugged into a small group (more on that later), and began “doing life” with the faith family there. The pastor was a skinny, jeans wearing, shirt untucked, blonde guy who looked more like a fraternity brother we’d seen in Tuscaloosa than a pastor of a “mega church”. His name was David Platt and he would change my life forever.

     I hope at some point on this blog to dive deeper into my own faith story, but for the purposes of this post, I’ll be succinct. Christ became my Savior at the age of 16, but there was very little spiritual growth until my early 20’s. That is, until we joined The Church at Brookhills. The Lord used this church, my small group, and David Platt to completely transform what I knew, or thought I knew, about surrendering my life to Christ.

     Let me preach a second here.

     Every day, I am made more and more aware of the “cultural Christianity” that surrounds me. Especially here in the deep south, asking someone if they’re a Christian is like asking them if they drink sweet tea. Well, yes of course. So many of our churches have preached the easiness of salvation and that all you have to do is “say this prayer, ask Jesus into your heart, and believe.” And that’s true. Sort of. The Bible is very clear that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). However, where I think many have dropped the ball is on the aftermath. I’ve “accepted” Christ. Now what? Pastor David now famously quoted this in one of his sermons during our time at Brookhills:

      “Accept Him? Do we really think Jesus needs our acceptance? Don’t we need Him? Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.”

     Surrender? What does that mean? David would say “giving the Lord a blank check with your life.” My new beloved pastor, Jamey Pruett, calls it “putting your yes on the table.” I like both analogies, but what do they really mean? This is where I feel many of us have missed the mark. This point, this crucial element for salvation is not being explained and driven home through discipleship in many churches. If Christ is your Savior, the Bible says you are a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come (1 Corinthians 5:17). And this “new creation” now has a new responsibility. Jesus cannot only be a “personal Lord and Savior”, but rather He is a Savior to whom we must completely submit and surrender control of our lives. “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Or as we sing from the old Baptist Hymnal, “Wherever He leads, I’ll go.” And He asks us to do something very specific with that surrendering: make His name known among the nations. The Great Commission. Spread the Gospel. He’s not just your personal savior. He’s a savior worth living for. And if necessary, dying for.

     At this point you may be asking yourself “what in the name of Paul Mitchell does this all have to do with barbershops?” If you’ve read this far, stay with me. I promise I’m getting there.

     In 2010, Pastor David began preaching through a sermon series at Brookhills entitled “Radical”. He would also publish a New York Times best seller similarly themed and titled “Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream.” This series and book ruined me. For the better. Let me just give you a few quotes from the book and I think you’ll get the gist:

     “Radical obedience to Christ is not easy. It’s not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And he is more than enough for us.”

     “We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.”

     “But then I realized there is never going to be a day when I stand before God and He looks at me and says, ‘I wish you would have kept more for yourself.’ I’m confident that God will take care of me.”

     I read this book back to back with another book from a teacher and author who has also had an enormous impact on my life: John Piper. His book was called “Don’t Waste Your Life”. Let me also give you a quote from this book that has both challenged me and haunted me all at the same time:

     “Three weeks ago, we got word at our church that Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards had both been killed in Cameroon. Ruby was over eighty. Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing eighty years old, and serving at Ruby’s side in Cameroon.

The brakes give way, over the cliff they go, and they’re gone — killed instantly.

And I asked my people: was that a tragedy? Two lives, driven by one great vision, spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ — two decades after almost all their American counterparts have retired to throw their lives away on trifles in Florida or New Mexico. No. That is not a tragedy. That is a glory.

I tell you what a tragedy is. I’ll read to you from Reader’s Digest what a tragedy is. “Bob and Penny . . . took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their thirty foot trawler, playing softball and collecting shells.”

That’s a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. And I get forty minutes to plead with you: don’t buy it. With all my heart I plead with you: don’t buy that dream. The American Dream: a nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement, collecting shells as the last chapter before you stand before the Creator of the universe to give an account of what you did: “Here it is Lord — my shell collection! And I’ve got a nice swing, and look at my boat!”

 Don’t waste your life; don’t waste it.”

      I have spent countless hours and sleepless nights pondering that thought: How do I keep from wasting my life?

           The Lord used my pastor, my small group, and these books to help me process and understand something I somehow had missed over the course of my “church kid” life. I was not saved from my sin to live a selfish, care free life filled with comforts, trivial pursuits, and “stuff”. I was saved because the Father loved me infinitely and perfectly. And He wanted to me share this good news, this Gospel: that He loved the world enough to send His only Son as a ransom for sinners. Plain and simple. That was my purpose in life. That was my purpose for being created. To make the name of Jesus known far and wide.

           I’ve struggled over the years to know exactly what that’s supposed to look like. I’m a big believer in the Lord’s sovereignty and that He calls us to different jobs, different cities, different friends, etc for seasons where He expects us to do His work. But I’ve found myself questioning over the years, should I be doing more? If my life is truly being lived in complete submission to Christ, should I be working in vocational ministry? Should I go to seminary? Should I be on staff at a church? Should I work for a nonprofit ministry? Let me share with you what I believe the Lord has been teaching me through this season of questioning and searching.

           The Lord certainly uses vocational ministers to do His work. They are “called”, gifted, and uniquely led by the Holy Spirit to spread the Gospel. But God also uses “regular people” to do His work. Vocational ministry is not the calling for every believer. The gospel of Jesus Christ is spread every day by doctors, policemen, receptionists, construction workers, school teachers, and business professionals. It’s part of the beauty of this Christian life. The Lord in His goodness equips and uses all of His children to advance the kingdom.

      We’ve certainly taken the scenic route in this post, but we’re almost home. 

           The Lord has given me a vision for how I can serve Him and advance the Gospel in my community. Before you go and get Pentecostal on me, not that kind of vision. I was not struck with a blinding light, nor did I hear a voice from Heaven. Rather, He gave me comprehension. An understanding of who I am, what I’m passionate about, how He has gifted me, how He has equipped me, and how He wants me to use these things to serve Him:

I believe the Lord is calling me to open a business. Specifically, a barbershop.

           I could write another lengthy post on how the Lord has affirmed this to me over the last several months and I certainly plan to dive deeper into that at another time.  For now, I’ll give you just a couple of insights on how I’ve come to this conclusion:

1.)    Me: Who am I? Who has the Lord created me to be? How has He gifted me? I can answer that in a few sentences. I have been created as an extremely relational person. Relationships and people matter to me. A lot. I thrive on being around other people. I “come to life” you might say. I need meaningful friendships and conversation. When I go through seasons where my relationships are strained or stale, it changes me. I am at my best – my truest self – when I am in the fellowship and community of people I love.

Additionally, the Lord has given me the spiritual gifts of mercy and hospitality. Mercy – the ability to empathize with others. To be a listening ear. To care for and about people. Hospitality – hosting others in your space and creating a welcoming environment. Opening your home (or place of business) to others and shepherding them.

Practically, I have nearly 15 years’ experience in customer service and managing businesses. I understand the logistics that factor into running a successful business. And I love it. The job just suits me. Engaging customers and employees in conversations, listening to them, helping them solve a problem: the basic job description embodies who I am.

2.)    Community: Shannon and I moved to Arab for the purpose of living close to family and raising our children in the same kind of small town environment in which we were raised. The Lord had greater plans. We have fallen deeply in love with our church and our community. We feel like we belong here. And because we are certain this is where the Lord has planted us, I want to serve my community well. This business will be my base of operations from where I can invest in our community.

I heard a friend from college, Tim Milner, speak at a missions conference at our church last year. Tim is now a pastor in Huntsville and I though I can’t recall the entirety of his sermon, one point from his message spoke to me. Screamed at me might be a better way of putting it: As Christians, let’s not be so focused on reaching the Nations that we forget about our brothers and sisters down the street who need Christ. My Brookhills background had saturated me with an urgency for international missions, but the Lord spoke to me that night during Tim’s message and began softening my heart to the spiritual needs of the people of Arab. I love them and I want to create a business that attends to both their physical and spiritual needs.

      This post has gone much longer than I intended and I fear I may already lost some future readers, but I wanted to thoroughly explain my vision and my heart as best I could. I promise I will try to be more concise with future posts. So let me wrap it up. The goal of this blog, for those of you who care to follow, is to create a space where you can come alongside me in this journey. I am confident that the Lord has set me on this path, but that doesn’t mean I have all the answers. I desperately covet your prayers and wisdom as I strive to be faithful and obedient in this. Here are a few specific areas I would ask for your prayers:

-          Pray that the Lord would give me great wisdom as I explore the best avenue for barber training.

-          Pray that the Lord’s timing would be clear and that all logistics would fall into place according to His plan, not mine.

-          Pray the Lord would begin working in the heart of someone or multiple someones to serve alongside me in this venture.

-          Pray that I would continue to pray and cling to Proverbs 19:1. “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.”

-          Pray that I would love my wife and children well and show them Jesus through this season of change.

-          Pray that ultimately Christ would receive all the glory and His name be exalted in all of this. 

Thankful for each of you. More to come soon…

Drew

[neurotribe]

“I don’t see colour” or The Complicated Dishonest Politics of Identity

I didn’t blog last week because this post took me a lot longer to write than I thought. So please accept this post as last weeks and this weeks reflection. It’s quite long so grab a coffee or tea, and settle in for a bit of a read.

I was on my way home from a conference I was speaking at some years ago. It was a Melbourne December so for my northern hemisphere friends, that means one of the hottest months of the year.

In the warmer months, I tend to keep my hair quite short. This time, my hair was clippered to the point of almost being bald. I had a serious case of the five o’clock shadows and in addition, I tend to tan quite significantly during the summer months, a benefit of my Maltese genes.

So there I was, stopped at a set of traffic lights at a busy intersection in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. It was hot, the window was open, my elbow sticking out the side of the car probably listening to a 24 hour news station, nerd I know.

It took a few seconds for me to hear the yelling over the sound of the radio. I looked out the window and I could see the source of the yelling. It was two, twenty something white Caucasian males. The seemed to be yelling and it appeared to be aggressive. I turned the sound down and listened.

“Go back to where you came from you f***ing Arab!” they yelled. I looked in the opposite direction trying to find the target of their vitriol. I was the only car in this part of the intersection waiting for the lights to change. I looked back at them and once again in the opposite direction, thinking now that their target was someone walking on the other side of the road. I scanned the footpath and it too was empty as far as the eye could see. As I looked back at the young men still screaming, it suddenly dawned on me, they were yelling at me.

It was half way through December 2005, a time when Australia was experiencing a thing we now call the Cronulla Race Riots.

Putting on my best Aussie bogan accent, I yelled out “I am mate, back to Diamo! Cheers!” “Diamo” being the truncated version of Diamond Creek, a very white settler suburb close to where I live which ironically has experienced a shift in demographics since that time.

I didn’t really think about the incident until after the conference. I had some time to reflect and as I did so, in particular in the light of national events surrounding the riots, I realised the effect that this and many other incidents prior to and since that one continue to have on my sense of identity.

You may have missed something significant last week. A question was asked on the ABC’s Q&A program (you can see the question here, skip to the 32 minute and 15 second mark). The white, middle class Australian man who must be at least in his 60′s asks, “After working and paying taxes for about 50 years myself, I believe that no person living in Australia today should be entitled to any special benefit or recognition, which is based not simply on need or achievement, but on race or how long their ancestors were here. What do the panel think of that?”

The host threw to Sami Shar. Lucky bloke. I thought he responded well given no notice and the incendiary nature of the question. “It is easy to dismiss the value of race when it is not something that has been a defining aspect of your life, when it’s not something that has been used to vilify, deprive and destroy community ... when you’ve never had that kind of vilification ... it’s easy to say it’s a fair go, everybody is born equal, and “I don’t see race”.

In the US, yet another Trump inspired political firestorm is unfolding, this time as a result of a tweet telling four congresswomen of colour they should go back to where they came from.

I am not sure if you have heard of the term “identity politics”. The phrase, these days is often used in a pejorative sense however that was not originally the case. Back in the 1970′s was articulated as a framework that helped “those feeling oppressed by and actively suffering under systemic social inequities to articulate their suffering and felt oppression in terms of their own experience by processes of consciousness-raising and collective action.” The intent of identity politics was a mechanism that was "seen as ways to gain empowerment or avenues through which to work towards a more equal society.”

If you could for a minute, put aside your thoughts and feelings regarding the phrase for a minute.

Think with me for a minute.

If there were a mechanism that could help us see the systemic ways in which we could clearly see that for example black women experienced a significant and disproportionate level of violence over and against that experienced by other demographics, surely we can agree that this mechanism is a good thing? If this lens helped us to see dynamics at play that we were unable to see prior to the introduction of such lenses, again surely that would be a good thing? If this lens enabled us to begin imagining solutions that empowered this demographic, and helped us collectively move towards a more equal society, again surely we would consider this to be a good thing?

Now remember, prior to the previous paragraph, I said that in order to see the goodness of such a mechanism we would need to park our bias concerning the mechanism and the name of this mechanism, namely identity politics. So if you can’t quite see the goodness that I am referring to in the above paragraph, perhaps skip back up the article and try again?

Regardless of how you are feeling at this stage of the post, this was exactly the intent of the origins of identity politics. Namely:

A framework that helped us see something that we could not see before and,

Once seen, solutions could be conceived of that would move us towards a more equal society.

Arguably, identity politics as a mechanism is responsible for some of the most significant social transformations during the last four decades including but not limited to the ongoing struggle for women’s rights (in all spheres), the civil rights of minority groups and the civil rights of those who do not conform to gender or sexual “social norms”.

Fast forward four decades and we have all sorts of people using the phrase identity politics negatively, almost as a profanity. The arguments against identity politics are many including but not limited to:

It is a concept that emerges from Marxism, Socialism (insert whatever “ism” will gain the most negative of reactions in the audience that the critic seeks to persuade),

It is destructive,

It is negative,

It divides people rather than bringing people together.

The use of the phrase “identity politics” and the associated negative attributions are one of the quickest ways of shutting down debate around who holds power and more importantly alternative visions to the status quo that may emerge after honest reflection.

And it is the lack of honesty in these criticisms that angers me most.

Those who seek to criticise identity politics as a divisive tool are employing the very same mechanism they seek to discredit in their attempts to discredit it! In their attempts to discredit identity politics, critics use a specific form of identity politics referred to as “white grievance” or “white identity” politics, a form of identity politics!  

Professor Ashely Jardina, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University noted that Trump’s “go back” tweet was a strategic and well thought through strategy designed to speak directly to the anxieties of two groups of people:

"The first subset are white voters who are racially resentful, who have hostility to voters of colour, they don't believe they play by the rules," she says. "Telling women of colour in Congress to go back to the countries they come from is going to resonate with racially prejudiced voters."

It will also play well, she says, with a different subset: voters who are worried about the changing demographics of America but don't harbour the same hostility towards racial minorities."For these voters, the idea elected officials don't uniformly look like them is symbolic of the loss of political power that white Americans have enjoyed for a long time."

So critics of identity politics,

using the very same framework,

on the basis of an identity “white anxiety” or “white grievance”,

on the basis of the fears of real or perceived loss of power,

and therefore as a consequence of using identity politics to clearly articulate the fears experienced by this demographic,

attempt to shut down debate arising as a result of identity politics.

Dishonest. Brilliant. But yeah, dishonest.

It seems to me that when one group becomes aware to their lack of power, and when that group seeks to find it’s power, and when a society needs to adjust and specifically when those who are accustomed to having a monopoly upon power find themselves in a position of needing to share their power with others, well quite frankly it gets ugly.

Case in point the national debate surrounding Australia’s treatment of Adam Goodes as a result of the release of the documentary The Final Quarter.

So where to from here? I have four thoughts (and an optional fifth):

1) The dishonesty needs to be exposed When those who attack the use of identity politics use the exact same tactic, well firstly, to be totally honest, I congratulate them. Well played. However the fact that they are using the same strategy to reinforce the status quo, that dishonesty needs to be exposed.

2) Be compassionate when dealing with people who are afraid (including yourself) There is something exhilarating about discovering and beginning to use ones power. Conversely there is something quite terrifying to discover that you are about to lose power, especially if the power you are about to lose was something that you didn’t realise you had and the imminent loss comes as a surprise. I have written about this before. The full post appears here. This quote which I used from that post speaks to this phenomenon well:

“To the privileged, equality can feel like a loss. Over time I have come to the idea that independence requires equality and, therefore, a sense of loss for many.” - Jesse Alan Downs

3) Holding power as opposed to holding power to account I am a geek, I have noted that several times. So to make this point, I reach to sci fi, in particular The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. In describing the marketing department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, the writer reflects they are simply "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes".

Revolutions are dangerous things. How many times do we need to go through he cycle of replacing one set of ruthless dictators with another? How do we move towards a more equal society if the process requires creating a new minority without power?

This is the trickiest of issues. Why? Because in order for minorities to take their place in a society and be involved in wielding power,  those with a monopoly on power need to have the wisdom and courage to recognise this and relinquish their monopoly. That takes a profound kind of leadership. Which brings me to my final thought.

4) Encouraging and getting behind honest, compassionate and wounded leaders of the status quo I jumped into my car and therefore came part way into an interview. I thought I recognised the voice of the person being interviewed but couldn’t quite place it. I listened to this political leader discussing identity politics. They noted the when identity politics are used in ways to identify those who suffer and help us imagine alternative futures, identity politics is a good thing. However when identity politics are used to divide groups of people and deny us the ability to imagine creative solutions, it was a bad thing.

I listened to this interview for about twenty minutes and only at the end, discovering that the person being interviewed was Barnaby Joyce. That’s right, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia who lost his seat because he was a dual citizen of Australia and New Zealand, only to win the seat back and then lose his position as Deputy Prime Minister because his affair with his former staffer and expected child became public news. (And so on and so on and so on).

It struck me as I listened to Joyce describe the ways in which identity politics helps us see groups who suffer that we are unable to any other way, and then to creatively imagine solutions, I was listening to a man who had experienced not just one, but several national humiliations. (I couldn’t find that interview, if someone can, by all means let me know and I will post a link to this article. However, I was able to find this article that you might find interesting.)

Another powerful white male who has given me pause to reflect upon the judgementalism I carry in my own heart is Eddie McGuire. There were many moments in the Adam Goodes doco that moved me. One of them however came from an unexpected place. There is a very short scene, where McGuire, after making several racial gaffes has had a moment to reflect publicly on the effect of his casual racism on Adam Goodes. Suddenly Eddie struggles to find words and chokes up with tears that he tries to hold back. He stands emotionally in the place of “the other”. He realises that he has hurt another human being in a way that will most likely leave a mark for the rest of his life. Yes Goodes may heal, however whenever Eddie interacts with Goodes, he will be mindful of the scar on Goodes’ soul, a scar that he inflicted. So as I have reflected on this doco, the world we find ourselves in, and as I have despaired at the apparent lack of a way forward in this tribalised world, I wonder if part of the way forward is to look harder for and then encouraging the honest, compassionate, wounded leaders of the status quo, or at the very least, looking for opportunities for their formation?

5) Optional fifth thought I have a fifth thought, exclusively for my sisters and brothers of the Christian faith. I have spoken at length with many a sister and brother in Christ about this stuff. One of the most demoralising things is the idea that issues of race are not “core gospel concerns”. In many of those discussions, Paul’s statement from Galatians is cited: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” as thought this somehow confirms the fact that this collection of my thoughts in this post is at best peripheral and at worst irrelevant to the practice of the Christian faith. However, after reflecting on Paul’s words and more importantly the context, I realise that they cannot be used to dismiss the issue. Paul in Galatians is taking on the fact that everyone seems to have succumbed to the negative dimensions of identity politics, in the way that Barnaby Joyce warned about in his interview. When you work your way through Galatians, everything up until this statement, it is clear, Paul is not commanding people to cease and desist. He is not telling people to cease playing the worst kind of identity politics game. He is in fact offering us a vision of what could be, a vision of a community where many tribes, tongues and cultures come together, as equals under the lordship of the only person we can trust to hold power, therefore relieving us of all of our fears.

[topworldhistory]

Marie Empress's life story was a fabrication. Her death—presumably at sea—was a total enigma.

How did the silent-film star Marie Empress, billed as “the most beautiful woman in pictures,” disappear from the ocean liner R.M.S. Orduña, unnoticed by more than 1,000 passengers and crew? 

Had the popular singer, dancer and actress jumped, fallen or been pushed overboard? Or had she used her well-honed acting skills to sneak off the ship in disguise? Even now, a century later, her disappearance remains one of the most tantalizing mysteries of the sea.

There have been many theories, but few answers.

The mystery begins

Early in the afternoon of Monday, October 27, 1919, the Orduña tied up at a Cunard Line pier in New York City. The liner had begun its transatlantic journey 11 days earlier in Liverpool, England, stopping in Halifax, Nova Scotia, before continuing on to New York.

On board when the ship steamed up the Hudson River were an assortment of VIPs, ordinary travelers and immigrants. Among the most celebrated names on the passenger list: 35-year-old Marie Empress.

Since her start in British vaudeville the previous decade, Empress had established herself on both sides of the Atlantic as a singer, dancer and dramatic actress. She was credited as one of the movies’ first “vamps”—a shameless seductress who lured men to their doom. At the same time, she was considered one of the best male impersonators in the business.

What Marie Empress wasn’t, however, was on the Orduña that day. The crew had already searched the ship three times.

READ MORE: The Cruise Ship Nightmare that Ended in Mutiny

The ocean liner R.M.S. Orduña, circa 1914.

The newspapers investigate

Empress’s disappearance was covered by newspapers around the world. Reporters interviewed her fellow passengers and any members of the crew who were willing to talk.

None proved chattier than an unnamed “thin, little, gray-haired stewardess,” whose account was picked up in many papers.

The stewardess said she brought dinner to Empress’s stateroom on their last evening at sea and returned to clear the dishes at 6:30 p.m. Empress, she said, asked that she come back at 9:30 p.m. with sandwiches.

When she returned at the appointed hour, Empress wasn’t there, so the stewardess left the sandwiches for her. The following morning, the stewardess found the food untouched and noticed that the bed hadn’t been slept in.

The stewardess allowed a reporter for William Randolph Hearst's International Feature Service a look inside Empress’s first-class cabin. As the reporter described stateroom 480, “In the rack above her berth were a number of photographs of herself—apparently placed aside to be given to press representatives on her arrival in New York.”

There was also a copy of a telegram she’d sent to a New York hotel: “Arrive Monday. Please have room for me.”

READ MORE: 6 Explorers Who Disappeared

Stateroom 480, the reporter noted, had a door that opened onto an interior passageway. Its lone porthole was 13 inches wide, “far too small for a woman of Marie Empress’s build to have passed through.” It was also locked from the inside.

If she hadn’t squeezed through the porthole, how might she have left the ship? The reporter tried to retrace her path:

“To have gone on deck Marie Empress would have had to traverse several passageways in which people were constantly going and coming at this hour of the evening. She would have had to pass through several salons, always at least half filled, and the actress was of sufficiently striking personality not to have been able to slip through unobserved.”

Besides running the gauntlet of passengers, Empress would have had to “pass by various stewards and officers, and, finally, having gotten there it seems almost impossible that she could have slipped unnoticed to the rail and thrown herself over.”

Making an unobserved leap even more unlikely, “All the decks and promenades are brilliantly lighted until long past the hour when she must have disappeared from the ship,” the reporter noted.

The talkative stewardess supplied some other intriguing details. Empress dressed entirely in black during the voyage, including a “little hat with a big veil… I thought she might be a war widow.” Fellow passengers would also remember the all-black wardrobe, adding that they often saw her wearing a monocle, the New York Tribune reported.

“She would make little jokes while I sewed the rips in her clothes,” the stewardess told the Hearst reporter. “She seemed just like any other lady who was making the crossing, except that she was better looking and better humored.”

Other witnesses also remarked on Empress’s apparent good mood. The Toronto Globe and Mail quoted passengers as saying she’d boarded the ship “as lively as a cricket, and was looking forward with enthusiasm to another season among her American friends.”

READ MORE: Bermuda Triangle Mystery: What Happened to the USS Cyclops?

A detail of the article featured in the Richmond Times on November 16, 1919.

Was it all just a hoax?

Soon the news coverage took a decidedly different turn. Remembering that she’d been involved in previous publicity stunts, one paper predicted that she would soon show up at a New York theater “with a seaweed halo around her head and an applauding public that loves to have a new one put over on it.”

The New York Clipper, a theatrical monthly, reported that, “several sailors on the ship said that Miss Empress was known to have been about the upper deck in sailor uniform and that she mingled with the crew the night before the ship made New York.”

“Those who believe the music hall star is in New York City suggest she came ashore in the grimy jeans of a fireman,” another newspaper offered. Firemen were the burly guys who shoveled coal to power the ship’s engines. For the petite actress to pass herself off as one would have tested even her skills as a male impersonator.

An anonymous petty officer on the Orduña put his own spin on the theory, telling a reporter, “She could have slipped into men’s clothes and hidden in the hold. There were men’s clothes in her belongings. Maybe she got tired of a woman’s life and thought she’d try a man’s for a while.”

The hoax theory was endorsed early on by people who knew a thing or two about such tricks: the press agents of Broadway.

“The mystery of the lost Marie Empress is solved,” the New York Tribune reported triumphantly. “Marie is as much alive as ever, but no one is supposed to know it yet. The fact is, the press agent hasn’t taken the lid off yet. He doesn’t want the cream skimmed off from the best advertising coup ever…”

The Tribune pinned the stunt on Walter J. Kingsley, the dean of Broadway press agents, perpetrator of innumerable hoaxes and onetime promoter of the escape artist Houdini. The cagey Kingsley didn’t take credit for the stunt but didn’t deny it, either. “Wouldn’t it be nice if a fishing boat picked her up off the coast or something interesting like that happened?” he told his interviewer.

Before long, the publicity stunt theory was so widely accepted that another show-biz paper, the New York Daily Mirror, could even joke about it: “It’s about time Marie Empress showed up for her local theatrical date.”

Not everyone was so sure, however. Several weeks later, a British paper asked a reasonable question: “If Marie Empress is in America, why did she fail to claim her trunks, which, after resting unclaimed over a month at New York, have now been brought back to Liverpool. They have not been opened, and so far no one has claimed them.”

Who was Marie Empress, really?

Throughout her career, Empress did a masterful job of padding her pedigree and concealing her true identity. Numerous articles, both before and after her disappearance, claimed that she was related to the great Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean, that her father was a former lord mayor of London and that her mother was a famous French actress.

As it turns out, Empress was born Mary Ann Louisa Taylor in Birmingham, England in 1884. Her father was a painting contractor, and her mother, according to the British census, performed “home duties.” In 1902, at age 18, she married a local dentist, becoming Mary Ann Louisa Horton. Four years later, the couple separated, after she had become “infatuated with the stage,” the dentist testified when he finally sued for divorce in 1918.

The name of Mary Ann Louisa Horton would appear in print at least once more, on November 8, 1921, roughly the second anniversary of her disappearance. The London Gazette published a legal notice filed by her executor, noting that Horton, “otherwise Marie Empress” had died “on or since the 25 October 1919.” As far as the law was concerned, Empress was now officially dead.

The British government also considered the case closed. Its official registry of citizens who died overseas listed her cause of death as “jumped overboard, presumed drowned” and provided a latitude and longitude corresponding to a spot in the Atlantic about 70 miles off Cape Cod, Mass.

It was a tidy conclusion, but nothing more than a guess.

Lacking any additional facts, the final news accounts fell back on speculation and sometimes overwrought prose. “What was it that reached out of the great waves and plucked Marie Empress from the liner?” one asked. “What subtle spell—what promise of surcease of sorrow—came from the black and racing waves that night, luring her to death in their icy arms?”

By early 1920, Empress had vanished from the headlines, just as she had from the Orduña. The world moved on.

In the century since, Marie Empress has been forgotten. Her movies, like so many from the silent era, have all been lost. Although she performed countless songs, none seems to have been recorded. Aside from some old photos and yellowed newspaper clippings, she left almost nothing to be remembered by.

Except, of course, for the enduring enigma of what happened to her, and why.

from Stories - HISTORY https://ift.tt/2Nq2Op5 October 25, 2019 at 11:22PM

[trendingnewsb]

5 Huge Celebrity Scandals The Entire Planet Got Wrong

The media has the amazing ability to shed light on terrible situations and stand by victims when no one else will. That or, you know, just point and laugh at them. Usually, the rest of us are too busy laughing along to notice this is happening, but if you look back, it’s painfully obvious. Here are five times the media came across someone who clearly needed help and said, “Yeah, but wouldn’t it be more helpful if we mocked the shit out of them?”

5

We Were All Obsessed With Diagnosing Charlie Sheen’s Exact Mental Illness (For Some Reason)

Back in 2011, people, websites, and media outlets of all political inclinations united for what seemed like a worthy cause at the time: making fun of Charlie Sheen. It got to the point where some lowly dick joke sites had to specifically ask their writers to avoid “Charlie Sheen is insane” zingers — it was far too easy. It all started when Sheen was canned from Two And A Half Men due to his erratic behavior, which led to a series of high-profile interviews wherein he attempted to explain that he was totally clean and sane. They, uh, didn’t go that way.

Hell, there’s still a weird corner of YouTube solely devoted to “Worst of Charlie Sheen” compilations. This auto-tuned one has over 60 million views:

One particularly notable line from Sheen’s interview with ABC News’ Andrea Canning (which is also highlighted heavily in the memes and songs) involved his mental state. Canning suggests that perhaps Sheen is bipolar, to which the star of Hot Shots! Part Deux replies that he’s simply “bi-winning.” And that’s where this starts to fall apart.

See, there’s a bad habit in the media to try to get mental health professionals to “diagnose” a famous person they’ve never met, which is very much against that field’s entire code of ethics. In a stunning display of sticking to their guns, psychiatrists are even refusing to diagnose President Trump from afar. So why was the media so hellbent on getting a diagnosis on the guy from some crappy sitcom? Time got specialists to analyze his speech to determine whether he was crazy or merely a drug addict. To this day, Dr. Drew is remarkably hung up on Sheen:

GoogleYou’d think someone with two “Dr”s in his name would know better.

Read Next

The 40 Best Cracked Quotes Of 2017

The media made it clear that figuring out what was wrong with Sheen was way more important than encouraging him to get help, which is a very different thing. Sheen admitted to Canning that he had no idea what bipolar disorder even meant, and Canning didn’t seem terribly informed herself (for future reference, it’s more complicated than being “on two ends of a spectrum,” as she put it). So after that whole kerfuffle, what did Sheen do? He organized a bipolar disorder awareness walk in Toronto, with funds going to a Canadian support group. Canning, meanwhile, only walked away as part of a meme.

4

Vanessa Hudgens Had To Apologize For Someone Else Leaking Her Nude Photos

When you’re a Disney child star, you’re expected to be a lot more than some kid who acts in movies and TV shows. You’re supposed to be a wholesome young chap or chapette who represents the family friendly values of the company, but also cool and desirable enough to decorate the walls of millions of horned-up teenagers. The perfect Disney star is equal parts sexy and virginal. And most importantly, they should never, ever be naked.

This is what made it such a big scandal in 2007 when someone leaked nude photos of High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens, who was 18 at the time. This was almost certainly a case of revenge porn, which is a crime most states prosecute today. But back in 2007? The media backlash centered not on the asswipe who did this, but on Hudgens herself, who had to issue an apology for … having nipples? Not being a vampire and showing up in photos?

At least Disney proved they had her back when they released a statement saying: “We hope she’s learned a valuable lesson.”

Frederick M. Brown/Getty ImagesAnd yet this degenerate is allowed to parade in public without pants.

It’s also kind of important to note the timeframe in which this happened. In 2007, as you surely remember, we were somewhere in the middle of the second season of Hannah Montana. Miley Cyrus had yet to smoke her first bowl and take a steaming dump all over everything Disney held dear. Lindsay Lohan was two years removed from Herbie: Fully Loaded, and her own problems were only getting started. The pressure on Hudgens was pretty bad, and all those indignant articles describing “saucy snapshots” which showed her in non-“ladylike” positions didn’t help.

Even stupider is that even when trying to “defend” her, the media still can’t help but crack a joke. Here’s HuffPo in 2013, six years later:

HuffPostNeither is reading HuffPo.

3

Nobody Took Chelsea Manning’s Transition Seriously

The existence of transgender people has historically been a source of headaches and inconvenience for the media. “What pronouns do we use? Do we refer to them by the gender they were assigned at birth or how they identify? Do we treat them as people, or as monsters to be derided and mocked? It’s all so complicated!”

So when Chelsea Manning was arrested in 2010, and later reports came out that she was transitioning, the media was confused, to say the least. Thing is, they shouldn’t have been. Manning explicitly said that her name was Chelsea and that she wanted to be referenced using female pronouns. It’s that easy. Nevertheless, practically every major newsroom in the country used masculine pronouns during much of the initial reporting — including outlets that already had rules about respecting transgender people’s wishes, like The New York Times and the Associated Press. Meanwhile, The Washington Post, in an impressive effort to avoid getting angry letters from any side, avoided pronouns altogether throughout an entire article.

On an even more stupid level, the terrible reporting was followed by articles about the terrible reporting which managed to be quite terrible themselves. Look at this stupid-ass headline:

TimeAnd whoever wrote this didn’t struggle enough.

There was a reason for disregarding Manning’s wishes other than ignorance or bigotry: money. Or at least clicks. Essentially, it came down to using key phrases in reporting — “Bradley Manning” was a household name, but Chelsea Manning was brand-new. Some grumpy news reader looking at CNN.com would have clicked on a new report about “Bradley,” but looked at the same story about “Chelsea” and not known who the hell that was, thereby not clicking. And if they don’t click, they won’t share the article via an all-caps Facebook post, and then where would we be?

2

Monica Lewinsky Was As Vilified As Bill Clinton, Despite The Obvious Power Imbalance

Under most circumstances, going from being a fresh-faced intern to the biggest name in politics within a few years would be a good thing. For Monica Lewinsky, unfortunately, it meant that her name became synonymous with a sex act that no one else had apparently performed before or since.

As soon as the media learned of Lewinsky’s affair with Bill Clinton, everybody across the political spectrum mocked her fairly harshly. Lewinsky jokes became a whole genre of comedy, especially for late-night talk show hosts like David Letterman.

CBS Television Studios

Even into the Bush presidency, Letterman still found time to make fun of Lewinsky. But why exactly did the American media think it was a good idea to rail on this young woman? Don’t get us wrong, making fun of Bill Clinton is totally fair, even necessary. He was the most powerful man in the world when the scandal happened, while Lewinsky was a 23-year-old intern who was barely out of college. Our military carries out orders from the president that they probably don’t agree with on a daily basis; do you think a young intern is going to have the fortitude to say “Sorry, just brushed my teeth” to the president of the United States? Him even asking for sexual favors was an abuse of power, but practically nobody covered the story that way.

After the scandal, Lewinsky was criticized for using her new celebrity status to make money, but she didn’t really have much of a choice there. Her career was ruined; people don’t generally get into politics in the hopes of one day selling a line of handbags. As much as she wanted to stay out of the spotlight, she’d been slapped with so many legal fees that she had to keep accepting every ridiculous offer that came her way. It was also really not cool that there were people seriously having discussions over whether or not Lewinsky references were “fair game” in the 2016 election. Everyone from Rosario Dawson to some rando Republican strategist in Florida had some kind of opinion on whether or not it was OK to drag Lewinsky’s name through the mud nearly 20 years after the fact when, again, it was not even Bill running for president.

1

The Media Pointed And Laughed At Britney Spears’ Mental Breakdown (And She’s Still Being Treated Poorly)

Man, 2007 was not a good time for anyone’s mental health. You may remember some of these headlines from your grocery store checkout lanes that year:

New York Daily News, New York Post, StarOh, but when Larry David gets the same hairdo, no one cares.

To recap, in 2007, Britney Spears was only 25 years old and on top of the goddamned world — or so we thought. After checking out of rehab, she decided that her hair extensions were too tight and asked her stylist to chop it all off. When the salon owner tried to talk her out of it, she grabbed some clippers and did the job herself. And because Spears was the type of celebrity who had paparazzi who would follow her off a bridge, the whole incident was caught on camera.

What did all of us do? We laughed. MTV, which could probably afford to serve caviar at the cafeteria thanks to her videos, let a clearly unprepared Spears lip-sync her way through an awkward, widely mocked VMAs performance. For a while there, “Britney Spears” replaced “Michael Jackson” as the punchline for every music industry joke. And inexplicably, the lone voice of reason in this whole debacle was a freaking viral video.

Vlogger Chris Crocker, better known as the “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!” guy, was genuinely worried about Spears’ health and how everyone in the media was treating her when he recorded that video. His own mom had been struggling with some issues at the same time, and he was truly upset with the way people casually dismissed the mental health of women he looked up to in his life. So naturally, we started mocking the shit out of him, too.

Spears was eventually able to get some of the help she needed, but at the cost of having to put all of her money and future earnings into a “conservatorship” held by her father and an attorney. That’s the kind of thing you only do when grandma starts trying to deposit her cash in the microwave. Today, you could say that Spears has recovered reasonably well, what with her hit Las Vegas residency and critically acclaimed latest album … but she’s still not allowed to handle her own finances. Crocker needs to make a new video called “Let Britney Have A Debit Card.”

Isaac’s life is falling apart, but only on the inside. Follow him on Twitter anyway.

Charlie Sheen got really into “winning” in that whole period, and he put together his Winning Recipes cookbook after it.

If you loved this article and want more content like this, support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_25225_5-huge-celebrity-scandals-entire-planet-got-wrong.html

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2rvwN7h via Viral News HQ

[frenchricegames-blog1]

Nose Hair Trimmers Vs. Clippers

Many of us are worried about making a long-term impression so for numerous people, personal health and also grooming is essential. Nose hair has actually ended up being a problem for numerous particularly males, makings nasal hair leaners so crucial. These are created to help secure the membrane layers of the nose and this permits and dust or particles to be sucked up by the trimmers to help keep your nose from becoming stuffy or stopped up.

Nose hair helps in the absorption of any wetness in order to help keep nasal passages healthy and balanced. It's important to understand that when you are trimming your nose hair, not to do it excessive and try to not cut also near the membranes of the nose as this could create damage to the membranes. If your membrane layers are damaged, this can lead to swelling as well as can even trigger allergic reactions.

However, having excessive nose hair could likewise affect your overall wellness. Breathing could become challenging in many cases as well as could allow you to have sinus issues in addition to various other concerns, quoted from http://nosetrimmerly.com/mens-nose-hair-trimmer. Moderation is crucial here with nose hair trimming. Your nose only requires a percentage in order to work properly and continue to be healthy.

There is a variety of nose hair trimmers nowadays and some consist of popular brands such as Panasonic, Bridegroom Companion and even Norelco. There are various kinds such as ones that are battery operated as well as electric ones. There are also ones that will need you to use both of your hands, while others could be used by merely squeezing a wing as well as rotation will certainly start. There are trimmers that are created when you take a trip and could bring them together with you. You need to buy one based on what your demands are.

Prior to you get your nose hair leaner, it's always best to do study on a few. Discover what each one deals and what their attributes are. The internet is a fantastic place to start as you could discover sites that use reviews of them along with descriptions of each kind. When you are starting to think about the price, remember that low-cost isn't really constantly good. There is a stating that claims "you obtain just what you spend for." However, the internet has numerous offers out there on whatever. An economical trimmer could be just exactly what you are trying to find yet just make sure that you read about it meticulously before making your final decision.

Making use of a nose hair leaner is not that hard to do. Listed below are a couple of things in order to help and make sure that you make use of after that properly.

1. Clean your nose delicately in the past and also after each use of your trimmers.

2. If you are a person that deals with nosebleeds, nose hair leaners are not recommended. If you are having allergic reactions or sinus troubles, it's best to wait till you are symptom free.

3. When trimming, make sure you have plenty of light as well as if needed, use a magnifier.

4. Carefully place your leaner, as well as never ever compel it in.

5. When you are choosing a leaner, make sure it is neither as well huge neither as well little for your nose.

6. Never ever utilize scissors or tweezers in your nose. Doing so could lead to cuts, splits and more.

7. Finally, after each use your trimmers cleanse them. This could stop microorganisms develop and can get rid of any type of bacteria. Making use of warm water prior to and after each usage is advised.

[trendingnewsb]

5 Huge Celebrity Scandals The Entire Planet Got Wrong

The media has the amazing ability to shed light on terrible situations and stand by victims when no one else will. That or, you know, just point and laugh at them. Usually, the rest of us are too busy laughing along to notice this is happening, but if you look back, it’s painfully obvious. Here are five times the media came across someone who clearly needed help and said, “Yeah, but wouldn’t it be more helpful if we mocked the shit out of them?”

5

We Were All Obsessed With Diagnosing Charlie Sheen’s Exact Mental Illness (For Some Reason)

Back in 2011, people, websites, and media outlets of all political inclinations united for what seemed like a worthy cause at the time: making fun of Charlie Sheen. It got to the point where some lowly dick joke sites had to specifically ask their writers to avoid “Charlie Sheen is insane” zingers — it was far too easy. It all started when Sheen was canned from Two And A Half Men due to his erratic behavior, which led to a series of high-profile interviews wherein he attempted to explain that he was totally clean and sane. They, uh, didn’t go that way.

Hell, there’s still a weird corner of YouTube solely devoted to “Worst of Charlie Sheen” compilations. This auto-tuned one has over 60 million views:

One particularly notable line from Sheen’s interview with ABC News’ Andrea Canning (which is also highlighted heavily in the memes and songs) involved his mental state. Canning suggests that perhaps Sheen is bipolar, to which the star of Hot Shots! Part Deux replies that he’s simply “bi-winning.” And that’s where this starts to fall apart.

See, there’s a bad habit in the media to try to get mental health professionals to “diagnose” a famous person they’ve never met, which is very much against that field’s entire code of ethics. In a stunning display of sticking to their guns, psychiatrists are even refusing to diagnose President Trump from afar. So why was the media so hellbent on getting a diagnosis on the guy from some crappy sitcom? Time got specialists to analyze his speech to determine whether he was crazy or merely a drug addict. To this day, Dr. Drew is remarkably hung up on Sheen:

GoogleYou’d think someone with two “Dr”s in his name would know better.

Read Next

The 40 Best Cracked Quotes Of 2017

The media made it clear that figuring out what was wrong with Sheen was way more important than encouraging him to get help, which is a very different thing. Sheen admitted to Canning that he had no idea what bipolar disorder even meant, and Canning didn’t seem terribly informed herself (for future reference, it’s more complicated than being “on two ends of a spectrum,” as she put it). So after that whole kerfuffle, what did Sheen do? He organized a bipolar disorder awareness walk in Toronto, with funds going to a Canadian support group. Canning, meanwhile, only walked away as part of a meme.

4

Vanessa Hudgens Had To Apologize For Someone Else Leaking Her Nude Photos

When you’re a Disney child star, you’re expected to be a lot more than some kid who acts in movies and TV shows. You’re supposed to be a wholesome young chap or chapette who represents the family friendly values of the company, but also cool and desirable enough to decorate the walls of millions of horned-up teenagers. The perfect Disney star is equal parts sexy and virginal. And most importantly, they should never, ever be naked.

This is what made it such a big scandal in 2007 when someone leaked nude photos of High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens, who was 18 at the time. This was almost certainly a case of revenge porn, which is a crime most states prosecute today. But back in 2007? The media backlash centered not on the asswipe who did this, but on Hudgens herself, who had to issue an apology for … having nipples? Not being a vampire and showing up in photos?

At least Disney proved they had her back when they released a statement saying: “We hope she’s learned a valuable lesson.”

Frederick M. Brown/Getty ImagesAnd yet this degenerate is allowed to parade in public without pants.

It’s also kind of important to note the timeframe in which this happened. In 2007, as you surely remember, we were somewhere in the middle of the second season of Hannah Montana. Miley Cyrus had yet to smoke her first bowl and take a steaming dump all over everything Disney held dear. Lindsay Lohan was two years removed from Herbie: Fully Loaded, and her own problems were only getting started. The pressure on Hudgens was pretty bad, and all those indignant articles describing “saucy snapshots” which showed her in non-“ladylike” positions didn’t help.

Even stupider is that even when trying to “defend” her, the media still can’t help but crack a joke. Here’s HuffPo in 2013, six years later:

HuffPostNeither is reading HuffPo.

3

Nobody Took Chelsea Manning’s Transition Seriously

The existence of transgender people has historically been a source of headaches and inconvenience for the media. “What pronouns do we use? Do we refer to them by the gender they were assigned at birth or how they identify? Do we treat them as people, or as monsters to be derided and mocked? It’s all so complicated!”

So when Chelsea Manning was arrested in 2010, and later reports came out that she was transitioning, the media was confused, to say the least. Thing is, they shouldn’t have been. Manning explicitly said that her name was Chelsea and that she wanted to be referenced using female pronouns. It’s that easy. Nevertheless, practically every major newsroom in the country used masculine pronouns during much of the initial reporting — including outlets that already had rules about respecting transgender people’s wishes, like The New York Times and the Associated Press. Meanwhile, The Washington Post, in an impressive effort to avoid getting angry letters from any side, avoided pronouns altogether throughout an entire article.

On an even more stupid level, the terrible reporting was followed by articles about the terrible reporting which managed to be quite terrible themselves. Look at this stupid-ass headline:

TimeAnd whoever wrote this didn’t struggle enough.

There was a reason for disregarding Manning’s wishes other than ignorance or bigotry: money. Or at least clicks. Essentially, it came down to using key phrases in reporting — “Bradley Manning” was a household name, but Chelsea Manning was brand-new. Some grumpy news reader looking at CNN.com would have clicked on a new report about “Bradley,” but looked at the same story about “Chelsea” and not known who the hell that was, thereby not clicking. And if they don’t click, they won’t share the article via an all-caps Facebook post, and then where would we be?

2

Monica Lewinsky Was As Vilified As Bill Clinton, Despite The Obvious Power Imbalance

Under most circumstances, going from being a fresh-faced intern to the biggest name in politics within a few years would be a good thing. For Monica Lewinsky, unfortunately, it meant that her name became synonymous with a sex act that no one else had apparently performed before or since.

As soon as the media learned of Lewinsky’s affair with Bill Clinton, everybody across the political spectrum mocked her fairly harshly. Lewinsky jokes became a whole genre of comedy, especially for late-night talk show hosts like David Letterman.

CBS Television Studios

Even into the Bush presidency, Letterman still found time to make fun of Lewinsky. But why exactly did the American media think it was a good idea to rail on this young woman? Don’t get us wrong, making fun of Bill Clinton is totally fair, even necessary. He was the most powerful man in the world when the scandal happened, while Lewinsky was a 23-year-old intern who was barely out of college. Our military carries out orders from the president that they probably don’t agree with on a daily basis; do you think a young intern is going to have the fortitude to say “Sorry, just brushed my teeth” to the president of the United States? Him even asking for sexual favors was an abuse of power, but practically nobody covered the story that way.

After the scandal, Lewinsky was criticized for using her new celebrity status to make money, but she didn’t really have much of a choice there. Her career was ruined; people don’t generally get into politics in the hopes of one day selling a line of handbags. As much as she wanted to stay out of the spotlight, she’d been slapped with so many legal fees that she had to keep accepting every ridiculous offer that came her way. It was also really not cool that there were people seriously having discussions over whether or not Lewinsky references were “fair game” in the 2016 election. Everyone from Rosario Dawson to some rando Republican strategist in Florida had some kind of opinion on whether or not it was OK to drag Lewinsky’s name through the mud nearly 20 years after the fact when, again, it was not even Bill running for president.

1

The Media Pointed And Laughed At Britney Spears’ Mental Breakdown (And She’s Still Being Treated Poorly)

Man, 2007 was not a good time for anyone’s mental health. You may remember some of these headlines from your grocery store checkout lanes that year:

New York Daily News, New York Post, StarOh, but when Larry David gets the same hairdo, no one cares.

To recap, in 2007, Britney Spears was only 25 years old and on top of the goddamned world — or so we thought. After checking out of rehab, she decided that her hair extensions were too tight and asked her stylist to chop it all off. When the salon owner tried to talk her out of it, she grabbed some clippers and did the job herself. And because Spears was the type of celebrity who had paparazzi who would follow her off a bridge, the whole incident was caught on camera.

What did all of us do? We laughed. MTV, which could probably afford to serve caviar at the cafeteria thanks to her videos, let a clearly unprepared Spears lip-sync her way through an awkward, widely mocked VMAs performance. For a while there, “Britney Spears” replaced “Michael Jackson” as the punchline for every music industry joke. And inexplicably, the lone voice of reason in this whole debacle was a freaking viral video.

Vlogger Chris Crocker, better known as the “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!” guy, was genuinely worried about Spears’ health and how everyone in the media was treating her when he recorded that video. His own mom had been struggling with some issues at the same time, and he was truly upset with the way people casually dismissed the mental health of women he looked up to in his life. So naturally, we started mocking the shit out of him, too.

Spears was eventually able to get some of the help she needed, but at the cost of having to put all of her money and future earnings into a “conservatorship” held by her father and an attorney. That’s the kind of thing you only do when grandma starts trying to deposit her cash in the microwave. Today, you could say that Spears has recovered reasonably well, what with her hit Las Vegas residency and critically acclaimed latest album … but she’s still not allowed to handle her own finances. Crocker needs to make a new video called “Let Britney Have A Debit Card.”

Isaac’s life is falling apart, but only on the inside. Follow him on Twitter anyway.

Charlie Sheen got really into “winning” in that whole period, and he put together his Winning Recipes cookbook after it.

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