durpacerangerrogjro:

IT’S BEEN OVER A YEAR SINCE I SAW THIS POST I’M SO HAPPY

Jo Fitzpatrick‎

UK sculptor Robin Wight creates dramatic scenes of wind-blown fairies clutching dandelions, clinging to trees, and seemingly suspended in midair, all with densely wrapped forms of stainless steel wire. The artist currently has several pieces on view at the Trentham Gardens and sells a number of DIY wire sculpting kits from his website where he also discusses in great detail how each piece is built. See more over on Facebook. (via Reddit).

mechinaries:

i imagine both steve and bucky like to come up with different ways to poke fun at sam every time they pass him during jogging

because they are shitheads

(the first one is a print you can get here)

flacamaritza:

me anytime someone other than the pizza guy knocks on my front door

#also whenever anyone CALLS INSTEAD OF TEXTING

YES THIS AS WELL. My voicemail message actually says “if it’s important, text or email me instead”. The only people who actually listen to this are the nice folks at my cat’s veterinary clinic. A++ Cambridge Veterinary Care.

““Fashion is one of the very few forms of expression in which women have more freedom than men. And I don’t think it’s an accident that it’s typically seen as shallow, trivial, and vain. It is the height of irony that women are valued for our looks, encouraged to make ourselves beautiful and ornamental… and are then derided as shallow and vain for doing so. And it’s a subtle but definite form of sexism to take one of the few forms of expression where women have more freedom, and treat it as a form of expression that’s inherently superficial and trivial. Like it or not, fashion and style are primarily a women’s art form. And I think it gets treated as trivial because women get treated as trivial. What’s more, there’s an interestingly sexist assumption that often gets made about female fashion — namely, that it’s primarily intended to get male attention and male approval.””

- Fashion is a Feminist Issue: Greta Christina  (via bossapplesaucesmelly)

Last year the Journal of the American Medical Association released a study aiming to determine the relationship between body mass index and the risk of premature death. Body mass index, or BMI, is the ratio between your height and weight. According to the National Institutes of Health, you are “normal weight” if your ratio is between 18.5-24.9.  Everything over that is “overweight” or “obese” and everything under is “underweight.”

This study was a meta-analysis, which is an analysis of a collection of existing studies that systematically measures the sum of our knowledge.  In this case, the authors analyzed 97 studies that included a combined 2.88 million individuals and over 270,000 deaths.  They found that overweight individuals had a lower risk of premature death than so-called normal weight individuals and there was no relationship between being somewhat obese and the rate of early death. Only among people in the high range of obesity was there a correlation between their weight and a higher risk of premature death.

Here’s what it looked like.

This is two columns of studies plotted according to the hazard ratio they reported for people.  This comparison is between people who are “overweight” (BMI = 25-29.9) and people who are “normal weight” (BMI = 18.5-24.9).  Studies that fall below the line marked 1.0 found a lower rate of premature death and studies above the line found a higher rate.

Just by eyeballing it, you can confirm that there is not a strong correlation between weight and premature death, at least in this population. When the scientists ran statistical analyses, the math showed that there is a statistically significant relationship between being “overweight” and a lower risk of death.

Here’s the same data, but comparing the risk of premature death among people who are “normal weight” (BMI = 18.5-24.9) and people who are somewhat “obese” (BMI = 30-34.9).  Again, eyeballing the results suggest that there’s not much correlation and, in fact, statistical analysis found none.

Finally, here are the results comparing “normal weight” (BMI = 18.5-24.9) and people who are quite “obese” (BMI = 35 or higher). In this case, we do see a relationship between risk of premature death in body weight.

It’s almost funny that the National Institutes of Health use the word normal when talking about BMI. It’s certainly not the norm – the average BMI in the U.S. falls slightly into the “overweight” category (26.6 for adult men and 25.5 for adult women) — and it’s not related to health. It’s clearly simply normative. It’s related to a socially constructed physical ideal that has little relationship to what physicians and public health advocates are supposed to be concerned with.  Normal is judgmental, but if they changed the word to healthy, they have to entirely rejigger their prescriptions.

So, do we even have an obesity epidemic? Perhaps not if we use health as a marker instead of some arbitrary decision to hate fat.  Paul Campos, covering this story for the New York Times, points out:

If the government were to redefine normal weight as one that does not increase the risk of death, then about 130 million of the 165 million American adults currently categorized as overweight and obese would be re-categorized as normal weight instead.

That’s 79%.

It’s worth saying again: if we are measuring by the risk of premature death, then 79% of the people we currently shame for being overweight or obese would be recategorized as perfectly fine. Ideal, even. Pleased to be plump, let’s say, knowing that a body that is a happy balance of soft and strong is the kind of body that will carry them through a lifetime.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

trying-to-resonate-concrete:

"I would have preferred this writer explore these ideas" is an opinion.

"This writer has trouble with certain aspects of story-telling" is a criticism.

"This writer sucks and is talentless" is a mean-spirited insult.

"This writer should die" is a vile, shitty thing for which there is no excuse for saying.

Please learn the difference and please don’t pretend you’re doing one of the two former when you’re doing one of the two latter.

discovergames:

rmsk8r05:

When cosplay starts to reflect Ubisoft’s game development philosophy.

A+, 10/10

[@tinatbh]

slutdust:

glowcloud:

hiphopfrightsplaque:

"We live in a world where losing your phone is more dramatic than losing your virginity"

Um ok but I don’t recall my virginity having 16 GB of memory with all my contacts, music, photos, calendars, and apps or costing over $200.

my phone is an expensive and important material object and not a useless social construct put in place to shame and commodify women

Plus I remember where I lost my virginity.

CollegeHumor has created an amusing video that explains net neutrality and why it matters. They also showcase examples of the kind of content that would the raw end of the deal should net neutrality go the way of the dinosaur — like amateur pornography.

At the end of last year, Robin Thicke took a lot of heat for both the lyrics of his song, Blurred Lines, and the accompanying video.  The latter is a transparent  instance of a very common strategy for making men look cool: surround them with beautiful and preferably naked women.

It seems especially effective if the men in question act unimpressed and unaffected by, or even disinterested in, the women around them. It’s as if they are trying to say, “I am so accustomed to having access to beautiful, naked women, I don’t even notice that they’re there anymore.”  Or, to be more vulgar about it, “I get so much pussy, I’ve become immune.”

The video for Blurred Lines was particularly egregious, but we see this all the time.  Here’s a couple more examples, featuring R. Kelly and Robert Pattinson in Details:

This is all to introduce a satirical series of photographs featuring performance artist Nate Hill who, on the mission page of his “trophy scarves” website (NSFW), writes: “I wear white women for status and power.”  And, so, he does.  Here are some maybe safe-for-work-ish examples:

There are more, definitely NSFW examples, at his site (and thanks to German C. for sending the link).

Hill brilliantly combines a tradition of conspicuous consumption – think mink stoles – with a contemporary matrix of domination in which white women are status symbols for men of all races. It’s not irrelevant that he’s African-American and the women he chooses are white and, yes, it is about power. We know it is because women do it too and, when they do, they use women below them in the racial hierarchy.  Remember Gwen Stefani’s harajuku girls?  And consider this FHM Philippines cover:

I’m amazed at the ubiquitousness of this type of imagery and our willingness  to take it for granted that this is just what our visual landscape looks like.  It’s social inequality unapologetically laid bare.  We’re used to it.

Somebody — lots of somebodies, I guess — sat around the room and thought, “Yeah, there’s nothing pathetic or problematic about a music video in which absolutely nothing happens except naked women are used to prop up our singer’s masculinity.”  The optimist in me wants to think that it’s far too obvious, so much so that the producers and participants would be embarrassed by it. Or, at least, there’d be a modicum of sensitivity to the decades of feminist activism around the sexual objectification of women.

The cynic in me recognizes that white supremacy and the dehumanization of women are alive and well.  I’m glad Hill is here to help me laugh about it, even if nervously. Gallows humor, y’all.  Sometimes it’s all we got.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

ppaction:

Anyone who thinks you can just walk into a convenience store and get the affordable birth control you need clearly has no understanding about the reality of women’s lives — and no business making decisions about them.

Have you been hearing this line as much as we have? Share this.

5 fact checks you need to know about the Hobby Lobby decision and how it affects us.

Host John Oliver tackled the income inequality debate on a recent episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Specifically, Oliver commends the optimism of the people of the United States while also pointing out a particularly terrible downside.

female-only:

sincecombahee:

APARTHEID IN DETROIT: WATER FOR CORPORATIONS, NOT FOR PEOPLE

Source: 

1. Carl Gibson, is a spokesman and organizer for US Uncut, a nonviolent, creative direct-action movement to stop budget cuts by getting corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. Contact Carl on the Commons or read his other articles on www.occupy.com
2. Citizen Radio
   
3. Vocativ
4. Detroit Water Brigade
5. Detroit Water Brigade

#DetroitWater #Detroit Water Brigade #OCCUPY #Carl Gibson #Apartheid

Artist Telmo Pieper Repaints His Own Childhood Drawings

Previously: Everyday Objects Turned Into Creative Illustrations

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

---

Flashback Friday.

The images below are all screen shots from the fantastic American Anthropological Association website on race.  They are designed to show how we take what is in reality a nuanced spectrum of skin color and turn it into racial categories.  In this first image, they show how we could, conceivably, separate human beings into short, medium, and tall based on height:

In this second image, they show how, by adding two additional figures, both taller than the tallest in the previous image, the way in which we designate people can easily change.

And this third image demonstrates how, when we actually consider all potential heights, where we draw the line between short and medium and medium and tall is arbitrary and, ultimately, not very useful.

Skin color is like height.  If we just look at three groups with very different skin colors, there appears to be a significant and categorical difference between those three groups of people.

But, if we consider a wide range of people, it becomes clear that skin color comes in a spectrum, not in categories (such as the five from which U.S. citizens are forced to choose on the census).

Much more on the social construction of race at our Pinterest board.

This post originally appeared in 2008.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

so-treu:

strugglingtobeheard:

elegantly-tasteless:

miaadamswhat:

geejayeff:

scandal-whipped:

Detroit activist slams reporter on air for misreporting reasons for water shutoff to thousands

OMG you all have to watch this.

She’s my HERO!

DAYUM! She shut that FOX-reporter-wannabe down. Not here for that mess at all!

Bloop

I’m tryna be her when I grow up

She dismissed the news team like bye I’m done with you. Wow. What lies, bless her!!!!!!

YES mama. YES.

Twitter account the Worst Muse isn't even a week old, but it's already a premiere source of hilarious writing advice. Below's a selection of our favorites.

Read more...

smartgirlsattheparty:

thesamiproject:

45 People Told Us Why They Want, Need, And Deserve A More Feminist India

LOVE THIS!!