It's hard out there for an Amazon warrior princess.
Wonder Woman has been a mainstay in popular culture for close to seven decades. While today she's known as a conventional hero (albeit a sexily costumed one), standing shoulder to shoulder with the Caped Crusader and the Man of Steel, there's a tension between the way she has come to be portrayed in popular culture and how she was envisioned by her creator.
Originally conceived as a response to the violence of popular comic heroes of the day, Wonder Woman reflected a particular brand of feminism that was simultaneously forceful and sexy, strong and desirable. Read More
Health and Medicine
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The bacteria living in your gut have more to do with your immune system than you might think. Knorre/Shutterstock
Your intestines are home to many different kinds of bacteria (and some non-bacterial organisms as well). Together they’re called the “gut microbiome.” They come from the food you eat – and whatever else gets into your mouth. Bacteria start colonizing your gut at birth.
Your gut microbiome aids in digestion and produces vitamins and other compounds that affect your health. It seems to play a role in many other health-related functions, including metabolism, cardiac health and mood.
It still shocks the crap out of me when I realize how many people are still unfamiliar with the sheer enormity of terribleness encased in E.L. James absolutely awful book. For those who neither have the time or inclination to crack it open, here are 50 of the most absurdly hilarious lines from Fifty Shades of Grey... but trust me, we're just scratching the surface! Go on, treat your "inner goddess!"
1) "Suddenly, he sits up and tugs my panties off and throws them on the floor. Pulling off his boxer briefs, his erection springs free."
2) "Desire pools dark and deadly in my groin."
3) "He reaches between my legs and pulls on the blue string… what! And… a gently pulls my tampon out and tosses it into the nearby toilet. Holy fuck. Sweet mother of all… Jeez."
4) “I line up the white ball and with a swift clean stroke, hit the center ball of the triangle square on with such force that a striped ball spins and plunges into the top right pocket. I’ve scattered the rest of the balls.”
5) “Don’t you like the butt drawer?”
6) “Argon? It rings a distant bell from chemistry class—an element, I think.”
7) “I sit up and reach for the orange juice, drinking it down too quickly. It’s delicious, ice cold, and it makes my mouth a much better place.”
MANY MORE AFTER THE JUMP!
8) Christian: “Dr. Green is coming to sort you out…” Ana: “Why?” Christian: “Because I hate condoms …” Ana: “It’s my body.” Christian: “It’s mine, too.”
9) “He’s said such loving things today … But how long will he want to do this without wanting to beat the crap out of me.”
10) “My subconscious looks on with approval, her normally pursed mouth smiling, and I am the supreme puppet master.”
11) "I flush. My inner goddess is down on bended knee with her hands clasped in supplication begging me."
12) "My inner goddess is beside herself, hopping from foot to foot."
13) "My inner goddess fist pumps the air above her chaise lounge"
14) "My inner goddess stirs from her five-day sulk."
15) "My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves."
16) “My inner goddess is doing a triple axel dismount off the uneven bars, and abruptly my mouth is dry.”
17) “The remaining subclauses of this clause 15 are to be read subject to this proviso and to the fundamental matters agreed in clauses 2-5 above.”
18) "Suppose he returns with a cane, or some weird kinky implement?"
19) "Mentally girding my loins, I head into the hotel."
20) "He's my very own Christian Grey popsicle."
21) "Feel it baby."
22) Christian: You wore my underwear. Ana: Did that shock you? Christian: Yes.
23) "The elevator whisks me with terminal velocity to the twentieth floor."
24) "I push open the door and stumble through, tripping over my own feet and falling head first into the office. Double crap—me and my two left feet!"
25) "And from a very tiny, underused part of my brain—probably located at the base of my medulla oblongata near where my subconscious dwells—comes the thought: He's here to see you."
26) "His gaze is intense, all humor gone, and strange muscles deep in my belly clench suddenly."
27) "That night I dream of dark places, bleak white cold floors, and gray eyes."
28) "His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel... or something."
29) "'Argh!' I cry as I feel a weird pinching sensation deep inside me as he rips through my virginity."
30) "I'm so glad I decided to wear my best jeans this morning."
31) "I must be the color of the communist manifesto."
32) "I am all gushing and breathy—like a child, not a grown woman who can vote and drink legally in the state of Washington."
33) "He has a coffee which bears a wonderful leaf-pattern imprinted on the milk. How do they do that? I wonder idly."
34) "Well, if you were mine, you wouldn't be able to sit down for a week after the stunt you pulled yesterday. You didn't eat, you got drunk, you put yourself at risk."
35) "My hormones are racing."
36) "Grabbing it quickly, I squirt toothpaste on it and brush my teeth in double quick time. I feel so naughty. It's such a thrill."
37) "Oh my… sweat and body wash and Christian. It's a heady cocktail—so much better than a margarita, and now I can speak from experience."
38) "And there it is, a white helicopter with the name Grey Enterprises Holdings Inc. written in blue with the company logo on the side. Surely this is misuse of company property."
39) "My subconscious has reared her ugly, snide head."
40) "'Does this mean you're going to make love to me tonight, Christian?' Holy shit! Did I just say that? His mouth drops open slightly, but he recovers quickly. 'No, Anastasia, it doesn't. Firstly, I don't make love. I fuck... hard.'"
41) "Why are we looking at a playroom? I am mystified. 'You want to play on your Xbox?' I ask. He laughs, loudly."
42) "Christian Grey just sent me a winking smiley... Oh my."
43) "Why hasn't he given me back my panties? I steal into the bathroom, bewildered by my lack of underwear."
44) "My anxiety level has shot up several magnitudes on the Richter scale."
45) "How could he mean so much to me in such a short time? He's got right under my skin... literally."
46) “'Put the chicken in the fridge.' This is not a sentence I had ever expected to hear from Christian, and only he can make it sound hot, really hot.”
47) "'I like your kinky fuckery,' I whisper.”
48) "Christian, you are the state lottery, the cure for cancer, and the three wishes from Aladdin's lamp all rolled into one".
49) “My subconscious has reared her somnambulant head.”
50) "Oh the sweet agony… his hands clasp my hips. He sets a punishing rhythm - in, out, and he reaches around and finds my clitoris, massaging me… oh jeez. I can feel myself quicken."
Actor Danny Masterson, who's been a devout Scientologist since he was young, gives a glimpse into what it's like practicing Scientology and addresses the controversy surrounding it in a new interview. [ more › ]
Star Wars Episode VII won’t be the only poster featuring Jedis in space later this year. In fact, NASA will put actually put Jedis in space this year — at least intrepid astronauts and cosmonauts dressed up as Jedis.
Kelly and Kornienko will stay in orbit around Earth for a full year after they leave Earth this September. Kelly, for his part, will be participating in a ground-breaking twin study, where he will be compared with his identical twin Mark Kelly after a year in space to give us a better idea of long-term micro-gravity’s affect on the human body.
It’s a bold mission that deserves a super geeky poster. The poster delivers:
Chapel Performance Space, the longtime, acoustically rich home of Substrata Festival.
Substrata, one of the country's most compelling experimental music festivals, will take place for the fifth year in a row at Chapel Performance Space, July 16 through 18. Organizer Rafael Anton Irisarri announced that 50 discounted pre-sale tickets are now available on the Substrata site. When those tickets are gone (he hopes by mid-April), Irisarri, who now lives in Westchester County, New York, will reveal the lineup and start selling regularly priced tickets and passes. He doesn't have any confirmed artists yet, but promises another exceptional lineup full of "cutting-edge international talent."
"My focus, as usual, is on rarer artists," Irisarri says, "ones who, while critically acclaimed, don’t necessary visit our shores often. I don’t want to repeat any previous artists, either; that’s been one of the parameters since I started the fest."
Past Substrata events have hosted such important artists as Mika Vainio, Grouper, Koen Holtkamp, Noveller, Eluvium, Biosphere, Tim Hecker, and Mamiffer.
On March 8, the Museum of Modern Art will open a retrospective celebrating the many facets of Björk‘s monumental artistic output. The exhibit aims to “chronicle her career through sound, film, visuals, instruments, objects, and costumes,” according to the museum’s site.
Part of the exhibit includes a haunting and stunning video installation titled “Black Lake” named after a track on her new album “Vulnicura.” The singer and composer released a trailer for the installation, but as enthralling as it is, it probably doesn’t hold a candle to experiencing it in person.
The retrospective, titled simply, Björk, is scheduled to run from March 8 to June 7.
If you have trouble keeping a goldfish alive in a simple bowl, the odds of you successfully maintaining a jellyfish are slim to none. But why go to the trouble of setting up a saltwater tank, acclimatizing your new pets, and feeding them planktonic eggs when Hexbug now has a perfectly believable robotic jellyfish Aquabot to entertain you?
Rene Descartes' most famous quote, Cogito Ergo Sum,neatly captures the dualism at the heart of the 17th-century French philosopher's worldview: the mind and the body are two distinct things.
The basic idea is there's mind stuff, like reading or thinking, and then there's body stuff, like working out or having sex. A good deal of Western thought is premised upon this dichotomy. (See also: Plato's Allegory of the Cave.)
The problem is that this dualism causes us to develop very narrow, limited views of ourselves as beings that sometimes do physical activities and sometimes do mental activities.
According to Australian philosopher Damon Young, this has led to a bogus myth in society that smart people are weak, and athletic people are dumb. To address and debunk this assumption, he wrote How to Think About Exercise.
There's a tendency, he writes, to see "physical and mental exertion as somehow in conflict. Not because there is too little time or energy, but because existence is seemingly split in two." You're either a body person, or you're a mind person. But you can't be both.
But as he argues, this way of seeing is extremely limiting, since it defines people "without an eye for [their] whole humanity." Contrary to popular opinion, writes Young, "exercise is a chance to educate our bodies and minds, at once."
In the introduction, Young says his book is:
an introduction to the psychological rewards, and ethical virtues, of fitness; a companion to exercise, which shows how our minds can thrive as we sweat and strain — how our muscles swell and flex with the right mindset.
When Young invokes the word "virtue" — which comes from a Greek word meaning "excellence" — he does so without some of the moralizing baggage that often accompanies contemporary workout guides and programs. "This book is not a guide to see a person's physique and guess their morality" he says. Rather, by touting the virtues hard won by exercise, what he means is that athletic practice "helps cultivate specific dispositions."
Take, for example, walking, which Young sees as a kind of moving meditation. While the physical benefits of walking are clear, there are plenty of other reasons to go for a stroll, as Charles Darwin knew quite well. As Young writes, when the naturalist had "hard thinking" to do, he went on walks — not because they helped him fine tune his theories, but because they put him in "an idle frame of mind."
Neuroscientists call this transient hyperfrontality — Young calls it walker's reverie. "Busy with pounding legs and pumping arms, the intellect's walls come down, and previously parted ideas and impressions can mingle together." By regularly practicing gentle exercise, says Young, we can provide our minds the opportunity to take a break from rigidity, thus allowing our creativity to flourish. "Exercise can be a habit that undoes habit," he writes.
To help make his case, Young invokes ancient and modern philosophers, scientists, and thinkers. For Greeks like Xenophon and Socrates, Young writes, exercise was a way to savor their full humanity. Young invokes philosopher David Hume in a discussion of the pride he feels upon discovering new muscles form and psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to explain the state of flow he reaches during rock climbing.
Every page of Young's book combines personal fitness anecdotes with insightful discussions of philosophical concepts, which drives home the point he's making: you can be both super smart and super fit. When we undertake exercise in this holistic way, writes Young, the result is not just a better body. "It is a more defined version of ourselves."
I recently caught up with Young to talk with him about how he thinks we should think about exercise. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Brandon Ambrosino: You're a respected Australian philosopher. Where did you get the idea to write this book?
Damon Young: I would tell people I'm going to swing kettle bells, or do hill sprints, or that I published two books on philosophy and martial arts. And people would say, "You're a philosopher — that's weird." And the idea was, because I'm a person who thinks, because I'm bookish, that I therefore must be sedentary, and that I must be wary of these "jock things."
I got thinking about that, and then started thinking about the broader situation. There's a dualism in our culture where people tend to think of mind and body as two different substances. That idea was already familiar to me from philosophy. So I got thinking about how that idea influences our daily lives, and about how people exercise or don't exercise because of this way of thinking about our bodies. I thought people could benefit from thinking about exercise, and fitness, and embodiment in new ways.
BA: Who is your book intended for?
DY: First, you have people who feel completely alienated from the fitness industry. They see themselves as mind people: bookish, curious, artistic. They see sport as something colonized by meatheads. This happens really early on, for a number of people, who are turned off to exercise early because of gym class in school. It was like physical, psychological torture. They hated it and never went back. So I'm saying to them, look, you are not exiled from the commonwealth of bodies. We are all bodies. There is no reason you can't revel in bodily striving just because you're bookish.
Second, there are people who have joined gyms because they were trying to lose weight, or because they were worried about their hearts. So they join a gym, go for six weeks, then stop. They treat their bodies like a thing you tune up. The gym is seen as a body shop: you go and get things tuned up, and once things are better, you leave. What I'm suggesting is that these people focus on the intellectual and emotional awards of exercise, the way it enhances the imagination. These rewards would keep people motivated over their whole lives.
Then you have the jocks, the people who are fantastic at sports in school, and they're fast, and they're rewarded for being swole [someone who is very, very muscular]. But no one ever takes them seriously for their minds. They're not rewarded for their interests in literature, or art, or avant garde music. The book is saying to these people: you can value yourself as more than a body. There are rewards you can get out of exercising that go beyond flexing in the mirror — not that I've got anything against that!
BA: And you do all of the exercises that you write about. There are even pictures to prove it!
DY: There's no point of me writing about exercise if I haven't experienced it. In some cases, these are exercises I'm familiar with. In no cases were these exercises I was good at. But practice, you know! Like yoga, I never tried it before I wrote this book. But by doing that, I was trying to enact the message of the book, which is: enjoy your body, try new things. There's smorgasbord of exercises out there. Give 'em a go!
BA: You spend some time discussing pride - as a positive thing! We're not used to hearing pride spoken of as a trait we should cultivate.
DY: The basic idea of pride is taking pleasure in yourself. There's nothing wrong with that! It's actually important because the self is in part just an idea. It's not something we can immediately see, or touch, or smell. The concept we have of ourselves, we live out. When we cause ourselves pride, we give this idea of our self a certain firmness, or vividness. When you get off the couch when no one is forcing you, and go for run or pick up kettle balls or sit in downward dog, that gives you pride. In the middle of your life, when there's so many other things to do, you did this. You pushed yourself. And your feeling of yourself is enhanced. That is important because the fuller sense of self we have, the more responsibility we take for it.
Now tie that idea to mortality — because we only have one life. We decay very quickly. Those moments of speed, agility, they don't last long. The stakes are even higher, then, in this brief time we have. While we can sprint up that hill, we do it. We do it when we didn't have to. It's a matter of keeping up our sense of self as our capacities wane. We will get weaker. We won't be able to sprint. But while we can, do what we can.
BA: You also talk about humility in the book, which seems to be the opposite of pride.
DY: Humility is the opposite of pride. It's feeling of displeasure in yourself. It's a heightened awareness — to use Hume's language — of your own ugliness of character, of certain aspects of yourself that you don't like. Starting from that assumption, it's important to tease out some of the benefits of humility.
Humility is important to me partly because of a certain image we have of exercise as an arena in which brash egotists bump up against each other. Whereas anyone who achieves anything of worth has to have some humility, some idea of their own flaws or blind spots. Or they fail. In fact, they will fail anyway. The question is, how humbly do they deal with it? Do they say, "No, it was the other dude's fault," or "It was the rockface's fault," or "The grass was working against me." Or do they say, "This one's on me. I didn't train enough. My head wasn't in the game."
The basic thing with humility is: it's my fault, and if I fail again it's still my fault.
BA: You talk about a very humbling experience you had while rock climbing.
DY: I just failed! I was too busy worrying about what other people thought about me. And also I didn't do the training I just wasn't up to. But to succeed at that, I have to get into right mood, and be aware of my own macho bullshit. Then approach the wall with a better sense of its details and nuances, and where I am in time and space, and how I've failed before. Basically, I have to ignore what everyone else is thinking.
The pay-off to this is the feeling of flow when I'm climbing well, and in the right mindset, and have this dynamic attention to the wall, to self, to the feet grips and handholds, to gravity, and all of this is happening all at once, and I'm "in the zone," as they say. But without humility, without admitting that I suck, and it's all my fault, I'll never have that rich, pleasurable flow experience. Flow is a good example of how exercise can enhance your state of mind. But sometimes, we have to first shift our state of mind to properly enjoy exercise.
BA: How do we do that? When I'm working out, I have a difficult time concentrating when I suck at something, because I keep thinking about how dumb I must look to everyone else.
DY: The first thing is to focus on what the exercise gives you, rather than how other people are succeeding. For someone who is immensely proud and arrogant, they need to be showed up in order to learn. But for someone who is constantly humbled by everyone else around them — like most of us — it's not helpful to compare yourself. It rips out the joy of exercise.
You can only do what you can do. You are right: other people are better than you. It's OK to suck. It really is fine. Most people are mediocre at most things they do, and exercise is no different. Michael Jordan and baseball, man ... he just wasn't quite the same Michael Jordan when he was playing baseball.
BA: Why do we spend so much energy comparing ourselves to other people?
DY: As Hume notes, that's partly human nature. Our sense of what one thing is, is always gained in how it's related to other things. That's often the case with identity. If you stand naked in front of the mirror and imagine elite athletes, you may feel bad about yourself — or feel slightly aroused, whatever comes first. But if you imagine someone out of shape, or slightly overweight, you may feel better. That just shows the arbitrariness of it all.
BA: When we compete against ourselves during workouts, pain is sometimes involved. And this isn't always a bad thing, right?
DY: The mainstream understanding of pain is that it's bad. We tend to think pain is a straightforward nervous system signal: something happens, the signal goes. Whereas evidence suggests that, no, how you think and feel about that activity causing the pain will change the way you feel the pain.
What you see in sport is the meaning of exercise changes the meaning of pain. Not only do people put up with pain, but they will freely choose to participate in forms of fitness that are more painful than others. And if you remove that pain, they will get less out of it. Rather than being frightened off by discomfort, they instead see it as an integral but changeable part of a freely chosen exertion.
For example, the feeling of getting punched in the ribs in martial arts is almost identical in terms of impact to hitting my ribs on the couch. When I hit myself on the couch at home because of my kids' Legos, I'm furious because that pain was foisted upon me. But with martial arts, I've chosen to fight my friend, to cultivate courage, and to put myself in harm's way — so pain ceases to be painful. Any commitment to exercise is going to involve discomfort and pain. Make it your own. It's your pain as part of your freely chosen activity. Also, the pain won't be as bad as you think.
BA: You talk about beauty in the book, and particularly push against the idea that being attracted to beautiful athletic bodies is somehow wrong.
DY: A common misconception about fitness people is that they're superficial and shallow because they look at themselves in the mirror. There's nothing wrong with enjoying beauty, or even your own beauty. There is a genuine human longing for certain kinds of harmony and proportion, new lines and shapes. Those do appear when you build muscles and lose fat. And I have to be honest: I do enjoy looking at these intricate patterns of muscle groups as they form on my body. It's perfectly natural to be gratified by these shapes.
The problem is when we turn this into a universal standard of beauty, which is bullshit. There is no such thing.
The other problem is when you think physical beauty means anything more than that, when you look at someone's physical appearance and try to guess their morality, which happens far too often. There's a really nasty trend in media and pop culture where people hate on fat people, who are seen as "obviously greedy and lazy and stupid." There are whole television shows premised on the idea that we punish fat people, or we enjoy watching them punished because deep down we know they deserve it. This has zero to do with reveling in your body and zero to do with fitness. It is entertainment of the most vulgar kind.
The fact that you do or do not have superficial beauty says nothing about the rest of your life. You don't deserve any more or less respect or happiness than anyone else. It's possible to have stunning physique that required decades of meticulous planning and effort — and still be a dick.
BA: Another problem with appreciating beauty is that sometimes our admiration can turn into ogling.
DY: Yes, there's a fine line between appreciating and perving.
For example, there's a US sprinter named Carmelita Jeter, who had these black and white nudes taken for ESPN. They're just exquisite! The power in her body, the harmonies, the proportions are incredible. That is a perfectly healthy admiration, looking at what she's made with her body. But it becomes a problem when the only way I can appreciate a physique like that is sexually. Then it becomes about how can I possess that person rather than appreciate what they've made of themselves. And with that sexualization comes dehumanization. That physique becomes purely an object for your pleasure.
We know how women are often treated: they're valued for their exterior and nothing else. That's dehumanizing. What I'm saying it it's possible to appreciate the exterior without rest of that horrible oppression. I don't need to rob Carmelita of her full humanity in order to recognize that her exterior is beautiful.
BA: What advice would you give inactive people looking to start exercising?
DY: The first thing is: be realistic. If you are surrounded by images of elite athletes, you may be focusing on the wrong goal. Instead of enjoying the experience, you're trying to match others' achievement. Which is likely to end badly, for most of us. One way to fix this is to think about practices, not outcomes. Rather than saying I've got to lose this much fat by this date, say I'm going run this many times a week, and I'm going to enjoy the feeling of my legs running around neighborhood, and I'm going to run past something I've never seen before. Concentrate on regular practices, not ideal goals.
Second, be realistic about what you're likely to do. For many of us, getting to the gym on our way home from work is not something we're going to do. You may do it when the novelty is there for a few months, but eventually, it'll be thing that goes, because it's slightly inconvenient. Build your routines into your daily life. I do almost all my exercises from home. I run around where I live. I do planks, push-ups, sit-ups, kettle bells. Most importantly I have a chin-ups set. And I do it because its 20 feet away. If I have to drive to the gym, it's going to be problem.
Third, focus on your whole humanity, not just your bodily machine. If your whole focus is on how much weight you've lost, or how fast you're running, or how much you can bench, sooner or later that's going to wear thin. Or you'll reach those and plateau. It's far better to focus on intellectual enhancements: to experience the reverie of walking, the sublime of swimming. When you focus on the experience, that will keep you exercising for 30 or 40 years. Don't think of it as an abs tune-up.
BA: Can you summarize all of your thoughts about exercise into one guiding mantra for workouts?
DY: Revel in your whole humanity. Not just your mind or your body.
Driving stoned isn’t nearly as dangerous as driving drunk, according to a new study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration which, just incidentally gave stoners proof to end (or spark?) arguments across the nation.
Ah, yes, while the exact impact of THC is hard to determine, the research showed that driving drunk and driving stoned have different results.
You are nearly 600 percent more likely to crash if you’ve been drinking and get behind the wheel. With THC in your system, you are just 25 percent more likely to crash and that factor nearly disappeared when the study factored in age and gender.
The NHTSA even went so far as to admit that, “[a]t the current time, specific drug concentration levels cannot be reliably equated with a specific degree of driver impairment.” Read: Measuring how much THC is in someone’s blood stream doesn’t correspond to someone’s impairment the same way alcohol does.
But don’t expect this research to win over law enforcement if you’re pulled over, the research won’t be affecting our laws anytime soon.
"Kissing is so vanilla. Let's just breathe into each other's mouths."
A lot of the Fifty Shades of Grey backlash—particularly from people who have never read or seen Fifty Shades of Grey—is inspired by discomfort with the idea of women’s sexuality. The concept of women taking pleasure from a consensual but nontraditional relationship with a sexy man is somehow still too prickly for pop culture to embrace. So they make jokes about how poorly written the book is, they diminish the countless real-life women who decide to visit—for the first time in their lives, maybe—a sex toy shop after being drawn into the story. All of this is happening because it’s easier to belittle something that you don’t want to acknowledge. So let’s be clear: If you want to read a review loaded with snarky slut-shaming, you’ll have to look elsewhere. The internet is full of those kinds of reviews right now...
There’s not much of a point in reviewing Fifty Shades (the movie) outside the context of Fifty Shades (the phenomenon). I don’t want to condemn what other people get their jollies from, and I think it’s remarkable that media has the power to change audiences’ perceptions of their own sexuality. Unfortunately, Fifty Shades conflates sexuality of any kind with agency; and as much as I’d like to think that everyone viewing or reading itdoes so with critical distance, that seems awfully optimistic when I remember how 19-year-old Carolyn didn’t think twice about Christian Grey’s patently abusive behavior, or when I consider how the little-Twilight-fanfic-that-could has created an unhealthy and inaccurate popular perception of kink.
Sure, there are people who enjoy aspects of Fifty Shades while also criticizing its glorification of domestic abuse; but there are also people who will pay $12,397 to get the “Christian Grey experience.” To recap: the Christian Grey experience depicted in the books and to some extent in the movie includes but is not limited to stalking, gaslighting, manipulation, forced alienation from one’s friends and family, and rape threats. None of those behaviors are part of BDSM. None of those behaviors are acceptable in a relationship. Fifty Shades (the movie) presents a less explicitly abusive dynamic than the first Fifty Shades book, but that’s in no way an endorsement of the film. If anything, that just makes its influence scarier.
Really I just wanted a pic of the shirt stuck on his head.
I’ve gotta hand it to Dakota Johnson, though–girl does a really good job of making something out of nothing. E.L. James’ Ana is basically just a placeholder, but Johnson is funny, warm, sympathetic, and smart (I can’t wait to see her in a more deserving movie). The book insinuated that Ana was a prude for hesitating to indulge her man’s “singular tastes,” but Johnson as an actor seems so obviously critical of the movie’s message that her reluctance actually makes Christian look a little bit like the unattractive jerk he is. If there’s one redeeming grace in Fifty Shades (the movie) that the book was lacking, it’s that Johnson’s surprisingly awesome performance allows the audience to look at Ana and see an actual woman. An actual woman whose boyfriend punishes her for visiting family. An actual woman who has her house broken into because she’s reluctant to sleep with a man. An actual woman guilted into thinking she has a duty to “fix” her abuser.
Jamie Dornan is fine. I guess. It’s hard to critique his performance when the character as written doesn’t do much aside from fume and wear the world’s lowest jeans. (Dornan’s core, however, is clearly vying for an Oscar. The man has a back like a bag full of snakes.) About that nudity: although the human cheesegrater stays safe in his magical floating pants for most of the film, Ana is naked more often than not; you could argue that’s illustrative of the pair’s sub/Dom relationship, but considering Fifty Shades is to BDSM as McDonald’s is to real food, it’s more likely that Ana’s physical exposure is just another indicator of the dangerous double standard upon which the entire franchise (and Twilight before it) is built.
Exhibit A
If Fifty Shades of Grey was about a woman who surprised her boyfriend-of-several-weeks by flying out to his parents’ house or breaking into his apartment, it wouldn’t have been made into a movie, or at least not one released on Valentine’s Day. A toxic woman is a scary or funny trope; men with the exact same behaviors are deemed “romantic.” The movie spouts a lot of fucked-up misinformation about BDSM (and for a movie that’s ostensibly pro-sex, it sure is obsessed with abstinence), but more than anything else, it’s a reminder of how easy it is to be a man.
Fifty Shades of Grey is so much smarter than its source material, but smarter in this case doesn’t mean better. Not where it counts, at least. The movie is savvy enough to know how to use E.L. James’ terrible prose as a comedic device, but just because the film wants its audience to recognize the ridiculousness of “laters, baby,” doesn’t mean that Christian himself is supposed to seem anything less than ideal. That’s where the scary potential of this adaptation lies: it initially presents itself as an ironic “so bad it’s good” experience, but when the shit hits the fan, it hits hard. Without any point of comparison, Ana’s abuse can seem like part of the joke, or worse, unremarkable.
There’s a scene near the beginning of the movie where Christian tells Ana he had no choice but to undress her while she was unconscious before putting her to bed. (Because sleeping in your street-clothes is deadly, I guess?!???) But he had a choice, and so do you. Don’t see this movie–not because it isn’t sexy, enjoyable, and fun, but because it’s business-as-usual misogyny in insidious, beefcake packaging. And because space bees. Nothing says Valentine’s Day like space bees, right?
The US military will provide hormone therapy for Chelsea Manning, the 27-year-old US Army soldier who was convicted in 2013 for leaking secret US documents, USA Today reported.
This is a first for the US Army, which still bans transgender soldiers from service and doesn't typically provide trans-inclusive medical care.
Manning was convicted to 35 years in prison, with eligibility for parole in about seven years, after she leaked troves of wartime documents and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks. She is being held in the US Army's Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas.
The military still prohibits trans soldiers from serving openly
A 2012 picture of Chelsea Manning. (Alex Wong / Getty Images News)
Manning's treatment is likely to be well received in trans communities and among critics of the US Army's treatment of transgender soldiers.
But it's an atypical move for the US military and Department of Defense, neither of which provide hormone therapy to their soldiers. The Department of Veterans Affairs does for military veterans.
The military, in fact, still bans transgender soldiers from openly serving. As a March 2014 report from the Palm Center explained, the ban allows commanders to dismiss transgender individuals from the military without a medical review, regardless of the soldier's ability to serve. As a result, transgender soldiers are forced to hide their true identities if they want to remain in the military.
The restrictions, as with other forms of discrimination against transgender people, are based on incorrect and outdated medical rationale. Many medical experts prior to the 1990s viewed transgender status as an untreatable mental health issue. But most medical experts today, including the American Psychiatric Association, agree hormone therapy and other forms of care can treat transgender people suffering from gender dysphoria, or significant distress caused by the gender someone was assigned at birth.
The military acknowledged the medical value of the treatment in a February 5 memo obtained by USA Today. "After carefully considering the recommendation that [hormone treatment] is medically appropriate and necessary, and weighing all associated safety and security risks presented, I approve adding [hormone treatment] to Inmate Manning's treatment plan," Erica Nelson, the commandant of the Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks, wrote.
The Obama administration could overturn the prohibition on trans soldiers openly serving and trans-inclusive medical care. Some administration officials, including former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, previously signaled they're open to reviewing the rules, but it's unclear when or if a review is actually happening.
I remember seeing this short film a long time ago. Basically, this little machine sees a television with a pretty doll face. She wants to be just like what she sees on t.v, and changes her appearance. The standards get higher and higher (literally), but she tries earnestly.
You can see what happens in the end.This video leaves a powerful message about how our standards of beauty are too high and soon it becomes out of reach.
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Actor Danny Masterson, who's been a devout Scientologist since he was young, gives a glimpse into what it's like practicing Scientology and addresses the controversy surrounding it in a new interview. [ more › ]
Our inboxes are full of these. [ 
At least one police officer finds this very offensive. [ 