#tressie mcmillan cottom

[mlobsters]

another banger of an article from tressie, gift link here for the full text

[tomorrowusa]

I also keep my eyes on the South because the Republican strategy of disenfranchisement is a state-by-state strategy. It looks like judicial rule where they cannot win. Where they cannot win by judicial rule, they will rule by procedural theft. Where they cannot convince voters to vote for them, they will convince the candidate they voted for to become one of them.

Tressie McMillan Cottom at the New York Times.

A great summing up of the GOP strategy to cling to power at all costs. And this strategy is certainly not limited to Southern states.

She’s quite right about this being a state-by-state battle. Keep up with state government. Start by learning who your state legislators are.

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

[fanhackers]

During the pandemic, we, fans, have been able to rely on some of our already existing coping mechanisms to deal with the increased strain of our mental health due to the global crisis. Participants in a study about the mental health of PhD students during the pandemic responded that their coping strategies mainly included social interaction and recreational activities. Furthermore, 

Lower scores of depression and anxiety were predicted by the strength of the overall social network (…) NAUMANN, SANDRA, LENA MATYJEK, KATHARINA BÖGL, SCHOLAR MINDS, AND ISABEL DZIOBEK. UPDATE ON THE MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS IN ACADEMIA: EFFECTS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS’ MENTAL HEALTH AND SATISFACTION WITH PHD TRAINING, 2022. 

In another survey, this one about Philippine BTS fans, social interaction and recreational activities were  both listed as ways that fandom supported participants’ mental health.

Despite being isolated from one another geographically due to the lockdown, the fans felt that BTS was with them throughout the pandemic, through their music, live videos, tweets, pictures, and even the mere thought of them. VANGUARDIA, MARC. “LOVE YOURSELF, BTS ARMY: PARTICIPATORY FANDOM AND AGENCY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” PHILIPPINES COMMUNICATION SOCIETY REVIEW, 2021, 229.

These digital  networks of intimacy allowed for comfort, happiness, and healing to be conveyed and received across miles in the physical realm and created imagined yet profound connections that acted as safe spaces for ARMYs online. VANGUARDIA, MARC. “LOVE YOURSELF, BTS ARMY: PARTICIPATORY FANDOM AND AGENCY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” PHILIPPINES COMMUNICATION SOCIETY REVIEW, 2021, 231.

By seeing other ARMYs and interacting with them on various social networking sites, the (survey) participants felt less lonely as a part of a community of people who shared not only the same interest and admiration for BTS but also similar experiences regardless of their cultural, linguistic, gender, and other identifying background. (Participants) pointed out that relationships were formed not only as fans of the same idols but as individuals who were included in each other’s support systems. VANGUARDIA, MARC. “LOVE YOURSELF, BTS ARMY: PARTICIPATORY FANDOM AND AGENCY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” PHILIPPINES COMMUNICATION SOCIETY REVIEW, 2021, 241-242

The individual activities and actions that the participants engaged in as fans of BTS served as a distraction from the bleak reality of the pandemic. By being occupied with tasks such as streaming, voting, and getting updated on the fandom over stan Twitter, the fans were able to focus on accomplishing things instead of dwelling on their problems and concerning themselves with the situation of the world around them. By being able to control something they found an anchor that was constant, and had a sense of agency in a time of almost complete uncertainty. (…) The participants exhibited a high level of consciousness of the positive effects and potential drawbacks of their engagement in the fandom. They recognized the various ways that their actions could affect their well-being, and adjusted accordingly by putting themselves in conducive situations that would provide them the greatest benefit. VANGUARDIA, MARC. “LOVE YOURSELF, BTS ARMY: PARTICIPATORY FANDOM AND AGENCY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” PHILIPPINES COMMUNICATION SOCIETY REVIEW, 2021, 239-240.

Fandom might be seen then, as a culture that adapted well to the pandemic. It would be tempting to characterise academia as also not needing to change drastically in a world in lockdown.

Drawing a parallel between these two is not a new statement.

In some cases, we argue that academic research interests paralleled fannish passion. HAYASHI, AYA ESTHER. 2020. “REIMAGINING FAN STUDIES IN THE AGE OF COVID-19 AND BLACK LIVES MATTER.” TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS AND CULTURES, NO. 34. HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.3983/TWC.2020.2029.

However, both fandom and academia have their  issues, which were  not only carried over into  the pandemic but might have been amplified by it . As McMillan Cottom explained  in a roundtable about the state of higher education,

Overall, most college leaders saw COVID-19 as an opportunity to do more of what they had already been doing. Schools that had wanted to respond to inequality doubled down on that. School that had been trending toward profit-seeking especially under the guise of a public institution-like Purdue and Arizona State -doubled down. SHENK, TIMOTHY, MAGGIE DOHERTY, NILS GILMAN, ADAM HARRIS, TRESSIE MCMILLAN COTTOM, AND CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD. ACADEMI AFTER THE PANDEMIC: A ROUNDTABLE ON HOW COVID-19 HAS CHANGED AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES. OTHER. DISSENT, 2021. 

(…) participatory culture of affiliation in the BTS ARMY fandom can be ambiguous at best in its effect on fan mental health. VANGUARDIA, MARC. “LOVE YOURSELF, BTS ARMY: PARTICIPATORY FANDOM AND AGENCY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” PHILIPPINES COMMUNICATION SOCIETY REVIEW, 2021, 243.

Notwithstanding the positive impacts of involvement in BTS ARMY? The participants generally agreed that some other ARMYs can be very “toxic”, or overly competitive, intense, or aggressive in their way of supporting BTS and engaging in “fan wars” with fans of other groups. To address this problem, some fans distanced themselves from stan Twitter altogether, avoided “toxic” fans by curating the accounts they were following or accounts following them, or decided to temporarily leave or stayed only to focus on ARMY common goals true to the ideals of BTS: The process if compartmentalization of personal and fandom life and interactions between online ARMY friends and personal/in-real-life friends that some participants reported as coping mechanisms for their mental health were a steady reality in network society where inclusions and exclusions always came together. VANGUARDIA, MARC. “LOVE YOURSELF, BTS ARMY: PARTICIPATORY FANDOM AND AGENCY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” PHILIPPINES COMMUNICATION SOCIETY REVIEW, 2021, 243.

In a world so changed by the pandemic, looking forward, we cannot accept neither the idea that we can go back to normal, nor the idea that we have moved toward a digital utopia. Harris says,

During the protests and reckoning over systemic racism in American life over the past year, students have been a major part of the national energy. But they haven’t had the chance to be on campus, to be in spaces where they can organize. A lot of college leaders, particularly at predominantly white institutions, are very concerned about what is going to happen when students come back. I think a lot of energy that has been pent up over the last sixteen, seventeen months will reveal itself on campuses. SHENK, TIMOTHY, MAGGIE DOHERTY, NILS GILMAN, ADAM HARRIS, TRESSIE MCMILLAN COTTOM, AND CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD. ACADEMI AFTER THE PANDEMIC: A ROUNDTABLE ON HOW COVID-19 HAS CHANGED AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES. OTHER. DISSENT, 2021. 

We have to reflect on how to adapt to this world, possibly, how to use our current opportunities to change. 

What practices can we introduce at conferences that don’t tokenize BIPOC scholars? (…) Let’s diversify editorial boards and conference planning committees. (…) Let’s create alternative funding for conferences and journals, to transform these practices from unremunerated service activities to activities where labor is honored. HAYASHI, AYA ESTHER. 2020. “REIMAGINING FAN STUDIES IN THE AGE OF COVID-19 AND BLACK LIVES MATTER.” TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS AND CULTURES, NO. 34. HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.3983/TWC.2020.2029.

[living400lbs]

The American Diabetes Association developed the term “prediabetes” to bring attention to slightly elevated blood sugar levels in some Americans in 2001. Over the next two decades, the organization expanded the definition of the condition, so that by 2019, as Charles Piller reported for Science magazine, 84 million Americans had prediabetes, “the most common chronic disease after obesity.”

There were no drugs specifically designed for prediabetes, so doctors often relied on off-label treatments, a common medical practice. But because off-label drug interventions coincided with the wholesale expanded classification of millions of people with a novel condition, a new market boomed.

This shift broadened the consumer language for medicalizing weight loss as a preventive strategy to treat not only diabetes, but also supposed — though not always proven — diabetes risk. It armed a wellness machine with the medical terminology of “insulin resistance” and “insulin sensitivity,” without the medical expertise to screen for diabetes risk indicators. People could soon buy an astonishing array of apps and devices to self-diagnose insulin efficiency. Enter Ozempic and Wegovy, perfectly designed for our highly developed consumer palates.

Given all these changes, I wondered what Dr. Richard Kahn, the former chief scientific and medical officer at the American Diabetes Association, who helped establish “prediabetes” as a term, now thought about the phenomenon.

When we talked, Dr. Kahn told me that he regrets his role in developing “prediabetes” and its associated grift, but his giddiness about GLP-1 drugs was palpable. He said that encouraging weight loss through lifestyle changes was an “abject failure.” Now, Ozempic offers patients light and hope.

The problem with these drugs, he said, “is that they cost an enormous amount of money.”

From Tressie McMillan Cottom

Oh, fyi: I weigh about 400lbs. I do not have diabetes or prediabetes.

[small-strong-bookish-butch]

"It is a kind of birth defect, really. The doctors at Harlem Hospital told my mother that it could be fixed, really should be fixed. As she tells it, the surgery would involve breaking both of my legs, resetting them, wearing hard casts and then soft, followed by however many years of braces necessary. When she tells the story, she gets a little teary-eyed. "I couldn't let them do that to my baby." And, so, I would live broken.

My mother could not fathom the cost of fixing me. But she could count the cost of teaching me to fix myself. I have several mantras committed to memory, but the one that I remember first and most is my mother's voice shouting, "fix your feet." Every time I stood up the voice said, "fix your feet." Every time I got tired and lazy, reverting to bowed-back legs and crooked toes, it whispered, "fix your feet." When I started walking and then later started strutting, I would hear it, "fix your feet." It meant straighten your toes, adjust your hips, lock your knees, and walk like a normal person. Fixing my feet became a way of life for me, an undercurrent of thousands of messages that form the subconscious playlist of our identity. It plays alongside other whispers like, "work twice as hard" and "keep your legs closed" and "don't talk to strangers" and "don't be a stranger" and "remember who you are and where you came from."

Fixing my feet is so deeply ingrained in my psyche that to dislodge it I would have to fundamentally change who I am and how I interact with the world. Fixing my feet is about accepting the complex reality of black life in the twenty-first century. I am living in the most opportune time in black history in the United States and that means, still, that I will die younger, live poorer, risk more exposure to police violence, and be punished by social policy for being a black woman in ways that aren't true for almost any other group in this nation. That is the best it has ever been to be black in America and it is still that statistically bad at the macro level.

Fixing my feet means knowing that I am no one's beauty queen and few people's idea of an intellectual, public or otherwise, and showing up anyway. Fixing my feet means knowing how badly the outcomes are likely to be for persisting and pursuing, but doing it anyway. I fix myself, even when it causes great pain to do so, because I know that I cannot fix the way the world sees me."

--Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom (emphasis mine)

[writerlunawinters]

Title: Thick: And Other Essays

Author: Tressie McMillan Cottom

Genre: Nonfiction Essays

Published: January 8, 2019

Rating: 5/5

Tressie McMillan Cottom is a public intellectual and author of Lower Ed. Thick is her debut collection of wit, wisdom, and Black Twitter snark on race, beauty, money, and more. It dissects everything from beauty to Obama and pumpkin spice lattes, and serves up clever prose and southern aphorisms in her own style.

McMillan Cottom's essays are a refreshing and necessary addition to the nonfiction genre. Her writing is smart, funny, and unapologetically Black, tackling topics that range from the personal to the political. She weaves together her own experiences with broader societal issues, making each essay a unique and thought-provoking read.

Thick is a must-read for anyone interested in intersectional feminism, race, and class in America. McMillan Cottom's writing is accessible and engaging, making complex ideas easy to understand without sacrificing nuance.

[llendrinall]

I knew a lot of the anger had to do with my critics’ being Extremely Online, a condition where social media compels us to read thinly, strip out all context and get to the part where we can be insulted as efficiently as possible. - Tressie McMillan Cottom

This, oh my, what a way to put it. To be able to be insulted, because that's the end goal. To feel attacked.

From a NYT opinion here

[lima-norte]

Las claves de la independencia periodística #AGSulzberger

✨ El acontecimiento. Con eje en la relevancia que tiene la independencia periodística, el editor del New York Times, A. G. Sulzberger, dictó esta semana la Reuters Memorial Lecture 2024: se trata de nuestro evento principal de cada año, en el que un destacado colega ofrece su visión profesional. Hemos traducido su discurso al español y a continuación te detallamos tres de sus principales…

[wellconstructedsentences]

The families that can hoard do, and the neighborhoods in which they live benefit.

Thick and Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

[mlobsters]

hannibal hair color descriptions are always a trip. and apparently we're on round 2 (that I know of) of blonde / light brown hair discourse on tiktok so I must add a link here, it concerns dear taylor

and back in january is when it really blew up, opening my eyes to the inherent politics of blondeness. tressie mcmillan cottom wrote about it here (gift link)

and my own personal anecdote, I have at most light brown hair but it's closer to medium brown. when I lived in miami, latine people always called me blonde which boggled my mind. but in hindsight it got me thinking about how and why the made up scale for blonde shifted darker

The second biggest psy op in human history is all the Hannibal fanfiction writers who are trying to convince their readers that Mads Mikkelsen is a blond rather than a man with brown hair that has mostly gone gray. The first, of course, is the JFK assassination.

[small-strong-bookish-butch]

"Black girls do not cause problems for powerful white women or august professional publications or public discourse. Black girls have not, for most of my understanding of our history in this nation, had the power to cause those kinds of problems.

Black girls and black women are problems. That is not the same thing as causing problems. We are social issues to be solved, economic problems to be balanced, and emotional baggage to be overcome. We work. Lord do black girls and black women work. We start work early before it is paid work. Then we start paid work and most of us never stop, are unable to ever stop. We work to keep churches financially viable, black colleges in business, black families functioning, black politics respectable, and black men alive.

In all of our working we can sometimes work the wrong way. That is what I was doing. I was working the wrong way... for a black woman who did not want to become a problem."

--Thick, by Tressie McMillan Cottom, p. 10-11, emphasis mine

[writerlunawinters]

Being too much of one thing and not enough of another had been a recurring theme in my life. I was, like many young women, expected to be small so that boys could expand and white girls could shine. When I would not shrink, people made sure that I knew I had erred.

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays