Arcy and Olivia

Arcy and Olivia giving me my daily inspirations....daily. curated by: KickAssChicas http://kickasschica.tumblr.com/

[arcyandolivia]

Rest in peace, Phenomenal Woman.

[arcyandolivia]

I'm already overrun with an impulse to go out and create something just by the trailers. I have been waiting for this one for ALONG time. I believe in Baz AND Leo.  Instant Classic?

[arcyandolivia]

Amapô Channels David Bowie In Their Costumes Designed For Stardust

Erica Gonsales August 31, 2012

[arcyandolivia]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/07/30/five-leadership-lessons-from-christopher-nolans-batman-trilogy/

Alex Knapp, Forbes Staff

I write about the future of science, technology, and culture.

7/30/2012 @ 4:26PM |10,429 views

Five Leadership Lessons From Christopher Nolan's Batman Trilogy

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy has been both a critical and commercial success. The entire series is on its way to earning $2 billion, and critics have acclaimed the series of films as the best in the superhero genre. This trilogy has succeeded because of its sheer quality. Nolan’s Batman movies are more than just action-packed extravaganzas – they’re meditations. Meditations on what it means to be a superhero. Meditations on the nature of civil society and its institutions. As a consequence, there’s a lot that we can learn from these three movies that can help us build and lead our own organizations. Here are five such lessons.

(Be warned! This discussion includes plot elements from The Dark Knight Rises. If you don’t want to be spoiled, stop here.)

1. Organizations Need To Be Built Around Ideas, Not People

“People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can’t do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man I’m flesh and blood. I can be ignored. I can be destroyed. But as a symbol, as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting.”

In Batman Begins, one key aspect of Bruce Wayne’s desire to become Batman is so that he can be a symbol of something. A beacon of hope so that people can aspire to do better. This is a thread that continues through all three films, particularly The Dark Knight Rises, where Batman is honored as the savior of the city, not Bruce Wayne or any one person. Pointedly, Wayne says at the end of the film, “A hero can be anyone.” Indeed, one of the major themes of The Dark Knight Rises is the consequences of the mistake made in The Dark Knight. By holding up Harvey Dent, in particular, as a role model, Batman and Gordon were forced to cover up his crimes committed as Two-Face. That cover-up led to some of the bad things that happened in the third film.

What lesson can we take away from this? Well, the people who build great organizations and companies are often larger-than-life. They drive their businesses forward with their energy and passion. But one problem that such organizations face is that when they become completely identified with a single person, their fortunes can rise and fall based on what that one person does.

You can see two diametrically opposed versions of this with two companies associated with the late Steve Jobs, Apple and Pixar. Apple is indelibly associated with Steve Jobs. He built the company with Steve Wozniak, and most of the companies products were based on one vision: his. After Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985, the company did enjoy some success – notably in the late 80s and early 90s, but the company floundered again until Jobs returned to the top spot in 1997. After that, Apple began its ascent to tech industry heights, largely driven by Steve Jobs’ vision for consumer products. As a result, Apple thrived, but also became synonymous with Jobs. Since Jobs passed away last year, many analysts see the company as floundering, with our own Anthony Kosner accusing the once innovative company as “playing it safe.”

By contrast, Pixar was also a company largely driven by Steve Jobs, who served as its Chairman of the Board and later its CEO. But while Apple was driven by Jobs’ vision for consumer products, Pixar was driven by an ethos of storytelling. That ethos is strongly held by the animators and writers of Pixar movies, who are committed to the high level of quality that have given the company enormous critical and commercial success. After Jobs’ departure from Pixar, the company remained strong, pushing out some of its best movies such as Up and Wall-E. By building on an ideal of strong storytelling, rather than one man’s vision, Pixar has built an enduring brand.

2. Actions Matter More Than Intentions

“It’s not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you.”

During one memorable scene in Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne is exiting an expensive restaurant, soaking wet with two supermodels in tow. It’s all part of his act to maintain a  ”playboy” image so that nobody suspects he’s Batman. On his way out, he runs across his childhood friend Rachel Dawes, who looks at him condescendingly as Bruce tries to defend himself. “It’s not who I am underneath.” Rachel’s response is pointed: “Deep down you may still be that same great kid you used to be. But it’s not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you.”

We often go through life with the best of intentions. One day, we say to ourselves, we’re going to start going to the gym and become a great athlete. One day, we’re going to finish that book. But for whatever reason, we get distracted by the present and lose our focus on the future. We never do go the gym. We never do write that book.

In organizations as a leader, we often have the best of intentions for our team. The right hand man that you rely on? You do plan on giving him more responsibility and training. That awesome clerk you hired a year ago? She’s efficient and way overqualified for her work. You plan on expanding her responsibilities and getting her a promotion. That engineer with a great new idea – you’re definitely going to talk to your boss about getting some R&D money to develop it.

Then things happen. You’ve got to get that quarterly spreadsheet in. You have a dozen conference calls to attend. You have to do a presentation for your customers. All of it gets in the way, and the next thing you know, your right hand man isn’t working nearly as hard as he used to. That awesome clerk? She moved on to a better paying position in another company. Your engineer? His VC sister-in-law got him some capital and he started his own company. And now you’ve been stuck in the same job for ten years when you had sworn you’d be running the place by now.

But nobody remembers what you meant to do. They only remember what you do.

3. Trust People With The Truth

“You have been supplied with a false idol to stop you from tearing down this corrupt city. Let me tell you the truth about Harvey Dent.” 

At the end of The Dark Knight, Gotham’s District Attorney, Harvey Dent, had gone on a murderous rampage as the supervillain Two-Face. Confronted with this fact, Commissioner Gordon was concerned that the revelation of Dent’s crimes would lead to the people of Gotham losing hope, which would destroy all that he, Dent and Batman had tried to accomplish during the course of the film. Batman agreed, and quickly offered to tell the people of Gotham a lie. Gordon would tell the City that Batman had committed the murders that Dent had. This would allow Dent’s memory to go untarnished. It was upon that memory that the City built up a new Gotham. But not one that truly dealt with crime – one that merely pushed it underground. In The Dark Knight Rises, the truth about Batman and Dent is revealed to be a lie that corroded the foundation of Gotham’s institutions. At the end of the film, a new Gotham is built on a truth – that Batman is a hero. And that “a hero can be anyone.”

As we run our own teams and organizations, it can be tempting to keep the truth to yourself. Especially if things aren’t going well, there’s a fear that telling the truth might incite people to leave or give less than what they’re capable of. Leaders often trick themselves into thinking that people can’t be trusted with the truth, and that if they learn it, bad things will happen. This is a fundamental mistake. If things aren’t going well with your organization, the best thing to do is to put everything out in the open. Trust your team to be adults, capable of handling the truth. What you’ll find, I think, is that the result won’t be panic. The result will be that your team is willing to repay the trust you put in them by redoubling their efforts and creativity into solving the problems at hand.

4. You Need To Risk Failure In Order To Succeed

“You do not fear death. You think this makes you strong. It makes you weak …  How can you move faster than possible, fight longer than possible without the most powerful impulse of the spirit: the fear of death?”

During the mid-point of The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce Wayne is trapped in a hellish prison. It’s a prison made terrible, says his enemy Bane, because it offers hope. There is a pit leading to the surface that the inmates can try to escape from. The only problem? Only one prisoner ever made it – a child. Wayne makes two escape attempts and fails both time at the same point – a point where he has to make a jump that seems impossible for a person to make. In discussing the jump, Wayne reveals to a fellow prisoner that he isn’t afraid of death. His fellow prisoner chastises him for this – pointing out that it’s the fear of death that will drive you to “move faster than possible, fight longer than possible.”

Lesson learned, Bruce Wayne makes a third attempt to escape. Only this time, he had no safety harness to catch him if he fell. And with that, he was able to make the leap and climb to freedom.

Human beings are naturally risk-averse. Indeed, a number of psychological studies have show that people are more likely to prevent the chance of loss than the are to chase a reward – even if the end result is identical. So when we start a company, build an organization, or lead a new initiative in our careers, it can be tempting to build safety net after safety net for yourself. The problem is, sometimes when you take so many preparations to avoid losing what you have, you make your organization too slow, restrictive and hidebound to accomplish anything. Sometimes, in order to win, you have a take a risk – even if that means jumping without a safety harness.

5. When You Do Fail, Don’t Let It Destroy You

“And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

One running theme of Nolan’s Batman trilogy is the idea of failing. It first appears at the beginning of Batman Begins, when a young Bruce Wayne falls into a well full of bats. Upon rescuing him, his father simply notes that the reason we fall is “so we can learn to pick ourselves up.” Something that’s echoed by Alfred to an older Bruce Wayne when he’s nearly killed by the League of Shadows. And of course, it’s the entire story of The Dark Knight Rises after Batman’s defeat at the hands of Bane. Rather than destroy himself, Bruce Wayne escapes from the prison that he’s put in and reclaims the mantle of Batman and vanquishes the threat to Gotham.

No matter how hard you try to succeed, it’s inevitable that you’re going to fail at some point in your life. The test of a great leader, though, is how that failure is handled. Some leaders make excuses. Others try to shift the blame. Still others just find organizations that don’t care about past mistakes – just “experience” and make the same mistakes over and over again, failing time and again without learning.

True greatness and leadership, though, comes with owning and embracing failure. Because only when you accept responsibility for your mistakes can you learn from them, pick yourself up, and come back stronger and better than before. In his famous speech at Stanford University, Steve Jobs spoke about firing from Apple. He said this, “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.”

In other words, Steve Jobs learned to pick himself back up. So did Bruce Wayne. And so can you.

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Read my Forbes blog here.

[arcyandolivia]

As anyone living in the age of depressing divorce rates knows, a happy long-term couple is almost like a unicorn: If by some miracle you encounter it, you can't stop staring, and you have a feeling no one will ever believe you when you tell them you saw it.

The Internet is filled with articles on how to decide when to end it, how to recognize when your relationship is toxic, codependent, one-sided, stagnant, asexual, manipulative. But we don't talk all that often about what defines a happy relationship. Picture it: You're dating someone new. You're waiting to feel the toxic stagnant codependency. Where is it? Months go by. Still nothing. At some point a corner of your brain dares register the thought: Could this be one of those? Could I actually be happy?

To help you answer that question, you lucky thing, here's a completely unscientific list of 31 ways to know you're in the right relationship:

You don't...

1. Fear it.

If you're afraid of commitment, best to work that out before you put yourself in a situation where it's hoped you'll eventually commit.

2. Hide anything more significant than a surprise party from each other.

That includes exes, cheating, debt, STDs, chronic illness, felonies, whether you want a marriage and/or children, genetic abnormalities (if you both want kids), a strong desire to live somewhere else, professional failures and successes, doubts about your sexual orientation, a strong preference for un-vanilla sex.

The truth will come out, and if you're with someone you feel the need to conceal any of this from, he or she probably isn't right.

3. Snoop.

If no one's hiding anything, why are you looking? Going through your significant other's email, phone, Facebook account, or journal strongly indicates that you don't trust the person you're with. You're also violating his or her trust in you.

4. Hide the relationship from other people in your life.

If you're unwilling to introduce the person you're dating at appropriate junctures to the most important people in your life, that's usually a bright, flapping red flag.

In general, if you have a good thing going, you can't wait for him or her to meet your friends, siblings, parents, the guy at the deli, and you wouldn't have any qualms about presenting this person to professional acquaintances, people you knew in college, family friends, even your ex.

5. Think you're superior.

If you feel that your significant other is your inferior in any way you know matters to you in a mate -- morally, intellectually, socially, financially or professionally -- you're never going to respect him or her as much as you hope to be respected.

The best relationships make you feel that you've convinced a person more exceptional than you to love you.

6. Resent the other person's success.

Professional jealousy can be as poisonous to a relationship as constantly thinking he or she is flirting with your best friend. It also suggests that you're spending a lot of time comparing yourself to a person you supposedly adore, rather than sitting back and marveling at how amazing he or she is. In a good relationship, you quit (or refuse to ever engage in) the one-upmanship.

7. Let any substance or behavior come before the relationship.

Any addict or over-user of a substance or behavior is cheating on you with his or her drug of choice. You deserve more.

8. Stew.

When something the other person does annoys you or turns you off, you don't push it to the back of your mind and hope it will go away, because it won't. You bring it up in the moment or sometime in the next 24 hours.

9. Damage property, animals, children or each other during an argument.

You think this goes without saying until you read something like this New York Times"Modern Love" and realize that human beings can rationalize staying with someone who leaves holes in their walls.

On the other hand, if you damage a vase or two in the heat of a different kind of passion, totally fine.

10. Challenge each other on personal issues in front of other people.

You know which conversations you shouldn't be having at brunch with friends.

11. Depend on each other for things no one can or should supply.

If you're looking to your significant other to resolve your emotional issues, make you more responsible/successful/adult, support you financially, improve your social standing, expand your group of friends, provide you with the family you never had, or make your parents finally accept you, it's possible you shouldn't be in a relationship at all, or at least not yet.

12. Begrudge each other time with your respective friends.

You can't be everything to your significant other, and why would you want to be? Sounds exhausting. Friends enrich your life, will accompany you to do things that your significant other may not enjoy, and keep you from getting tired of the person you're seeing.

Besides, if the relationship doesn't work out, those friends going to be the ones coming over to your house, dragging you out of bed and helping you rejoin humanity. Be good to them.

13. Lose Yourself

This is easier said than done, especially when the relationship is going really well. As tempting as it is to never leave the house (maybe never leave the bed), you keep doing the work, exercise, volunteering, socializing, networking, and daughtering you were doing before. Remember, these things made you the person Your Person fell in love with. They're part of you. Don't give them up for anyone. You can't afford it.

14. Have a secret plan B.

If you're where you need to be, the following thoughts don't cross your mind: "Maybe he'll dump me," or "If my ex moves back from Mongolia, everything could change."

15. Have much drama.

You know the cliche: The person worth your tears won't make you cry. Usually. You do...

16. Put it all on the line.

If you're not risking having your heart broken, you're not doing it right.

17. Respect the people he or she is closest to. You don't have to love them, but you should think they are honest and moral and have integrity. Want to know you're with a good person? Look to the people he or she thinks are good people.

18. Inspire each other to be better.

A good relationship is galvanizing, not in the oh-my-god-I-met-this-amazing-person-I'd-better-hurry-up-and-fix-myself sense (thought there's probably a little of that when you first start seeing anyone amazing) but in the way that knowing someone else believes in you makes you believe in yourself that much more. You want to prove yourself worthy of his or her confidence.

19. Humble yourselves.

You know you can't hide your flaws for long, so you don't try. You recognize that this person is going to have to take you as you are, as foolish or charitable (or both) as that may seem to make him or her. You know you're both going to mess up endless times and have to apologize and be forgiven and forgive. You'll wonder if one of the bigger mistakes is the one that will end it, and you'll have to prove to one another that the relationship transcends that. You recognize that you signed up for all of this.

20. Talk about sex.

Most couples don't instinctively know all of the ways to please each other. You have to talk about -- or at least show -- what you want. If you don't know what you want, you need to figure that out, STAT (step 1? Get thee to Babeland). And after you have talked about it, you do it. Better.

21. Talk about the rest.

The same things you're not supposed to talk about on a blind date -- religion, money, politics, kids -- are things you should discuss with someone you're serious about. What? You just remembered that thing you need to do? Get back here. No one said this was going to be painless. They said it was going to be hard and awesome.

22. Fight.

If you agree on everything, someone's not telling the truth. See #2 and #8.

23. Have times when you don't talk.

Not because you're angry with each other but because you can be quiet together. When you find yourself with silences you don't need to fill, when you find you can just walk along or lie about or work side by side and feel together without needing to verbally affirm that, you've got a good thing going.

24. Have object permanence.

Child psychologist Jean Piaget theorized that when babies get to be 8 or 9 months old, they begin to develop "object permanence," the idea that an object doesn't vanish when they can no longer see it.

In a good adult relationship, you know that you can go out into the world and do your thing, and the bond you've formed with the person you care about will be there when you get back.

This is also known as trust.

25. Take care of your body.

You know that you won't enjoy sharing it with someone else if you don't like, respect, and nurture it. Your partner feels the same way.

26. Divide and conquer.

You're not identical, thank god, which probably means you have certain strengths and he or she has others. Someone is more organized, someone is more outgoing, someone is a born listener. Someone is better with money, someone is more creative. Someone is more adventurous in bed.

If you each play to your strengths, you in all likelihood remember a gift (possibly an inspired one), your home(s) look(s) great, the bills get paid on time, sex is endlessly fun, and you leave everyone at the party thoroughly charmed.

27. Remember to look at each other across the room.

There's nothing more reassuring (or sexier) than glancing up from the interminable conversation with your eighth cousin or the head of operations or the report you can't seem to finish and locking eyes with Your Person and remembering that by some quantity of luck neither of you may deserve, you found each other.

28. Observe.

You notice when the other person is about to lose it, needs to leave even if you've been there only 20 minutes, is talking to someone he or she can't stand, did something he or she feels guilty about, is silently berating himself or herself, is ruminating over the thing his or her boss said, is about to spend an insane amount of money, and best of all, about to crack up in a situation where he or she shouldn't. You pay attention because you care, and because that's the good stuff.

29. Make time.

You realize that if this is it, one of you is going to be around some distant day in the future to lose the other. In that moment, you will not regret not checking your email in this one.

30. Occasionally get over yourself and your cynicism and fear of cliche and do something deeply, unapologetically romantic.

You send the flowers, have the book signed by the author, request the song, write the note, have the damned thing (tastefully) engraved. You call the other person and tell him or her that specific thing he or she did this morning that made you fall that much more in love. When you're not expecting it, he or she dares to say, even though we all know there are no guarantees ever, "When we're X age, want to Y?"

31. Just know.

Reader, marry that. How do you know when you're in the right relationship? Tweet your thoughts @HuffPostWomen using #marrythat, and we'll include them the slideshow below.

[arcyandolivia]

When things in your lives seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee. A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was. The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous "yes." The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed. "Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things--your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions--and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car. The sand is everything else--the small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you. "Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first--the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand." One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

[arcyandolivia]

Info on the full exhibition of art that includes animation and figurative works visit: conteanimated.com Behind the scenes rough cut here: vimeo.com/16330140 and final cut here: vimeo.com/21096567

[arcyandolivia]

Facebook, Nice Girls and Self-Worth

Soraya Chemaly

Feminist satirist and media critic

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/girls-cyberbullying-facebook_b_1197215.html

What girls say to each other on Facebook matters more than the possible threat of cyberbullying. It reflects what we teach kids about what's important and has real consequences.

Have you ever seen what happens when a teenage girl posts a new picture on Facebook? If she's popular, friends, boys but mainly other girls, reply with some variation of: "You look beautiful!" "Sexy girl!" "GORGEOUS!!"

They even get specific: "Nice butt!" "I wish my waist was THAT small!!!" "Bitch, (in the good way girls say it these days, of course) you look hot!"

In some alternate universe (and according to several competing superstring theories there are an infinite number) girls are doing this instead:

Posting a photo with a bio test: "I got an A on my advanced bio final today!!!" "No way!" "OMG! SO hot!" or Photo-hugging a book with accompanying post: "Just reading Tristam Shandy. LMFAO!" "Me, too! LMFAO2!" "I am SO SO SO SO SO SO jealous!"

Or talking about her athletic prowess, with accompanying video: "Scored the most awesome goal today! Look at this shot!" "You R AMAZING!" "O.M.G. That was the prettiest goal I've EVER seen." "Marry me!" (That last one always makes me burst out laughing.)

OK, I'll stop now. It's just so much fun over there.

Apparently, it's OK for girls to tout how they look, it's still not OK for girls to share what they accomplish or might be interested in. I am fortunate that most of the teenage girls I know are good, nice people. They are kind to one another. Supportive of their friends. Laugh readily and understand, for the most part, how lucky they are. And, I know that horrible, sometimes tragic, cyberbullying goes on. But, on any given day, it seems that for every genuinely mean girl, there are thousands of nice girls saying flattering things to one another online.

A girl's introduction to Facebook, and other social media sites often starts during early adolescence, when peer acceptance and relationships are most important to social and emotional development, particularly self-esteem.

By interacting in these ways, girls are being nice to one another. They're complimenting each other. They are telling each other something important about the world and their place in it. By the time girls are on Facebook they'd have to be living in the outer reaches of upper Mongolia not to know how important it is to be beautiful in our culture. They want their friends to be happy and succeed in that endeavor. What are the roots of self esteem in this equation? Primarily the way they look. And that's because it's what our culturetells them.

In addition to peer acceptance being important, adolescent girls develop a preoccupation with image. According to multiple research studies conducted by the American Psychological Association, girls are more likely than boys to emulate what they see in magazines, music videos, movies. Just as they are dealing with physical and emotional changes due to puberty (which always means healthy weight gain), they also have to deal with the unrealistic and unattainable cultural demands for female thinness, beauty and sexiness. Of course, ethnicity, culture, class and sexual orientation are important factors. But for girls of color and ethnic minorities, the implications are even less understood and perhaps even greater in terms of self-image.

Why does it matter why girls post these photos? Or, how they feel their friends' responses? Why is the timing, in terms of their socialization and development, crucial?

Here's what the American Psychological Association has to say:

Between the ages of 8 and 11 years, girls tend to be androgynous. They view themselves as strong and confident and are not afraid to say what they think. However, as they cross over into adolescence, girls begin to experience pressure toward more rigid conceptions of gender roles; they become more concerned with how women are "supposed to behave'' and with their physical and sexual attractiveness.

Early adolescence is particularly stressful on adolescent girls' friendships and peer relations, and often means a marked increase in indirect relational aggression. (Mean girls... ) Relational aggression is both more common in girls and more distressful to them. It includes behaviors such as spreading rumors or threatening withdrawal of friendship. It starts happening as girls negotiate power relations and, this is really important, affirm or resist conventional constructions of femininity. That when photographs and their comments come in to play and have more weight than might otherwise be ascribed to them. The photos and comments have power to define girls. Even girls who do not fit the mold of "traditionally" popular, beautiful and thin girl, if they are well-liked, are supported in this way - through compliments that focus almost entirely on looks, with smatterings of "You're so sweet!" and "You're so nice!" The opposite is also true. That's why cyberbullying can so quickly escalate to cause real harm.

There are several consequences and trends related to dynamic interplay of self image, body image, peer assessment, confidence:

In immediate terms, according to the NYU Child Study Center the emphasis on beauty, particularly an idealized, often sexualized and thin body, has implications for health:

Eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression are the most common mental health problems in girls.

59 percent of 5-12th grade girls in one survey were dissatisfied with their body shape.

20-40 percent of girls begin dieting at age 10.

By 15, girls are twice as likely to become depressed than boys.

Among 5-12th graders, 47 percent said they wanted to lose weight because of magazine pictures.

Health risks accompany girls' drop in self-esteem due to risky eating habits, depression,and unwanted pregnancy.

Girls aged 10 and 12 (tweens) are confronted with "teen" issues such as dating and sex, at increasingly earlier ages. 73 percent of 8-12 year-olds dress like teens and talk like teens.

Dr. Anita Gurian, a clinical assistant professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine, describes it this way:

Starting in the pre-teen years, there is a shift in focus; the body becomes an all consuming passion and barometer of worth. Self-esteem becomes too closely tied to physical attributes; girls feel they can't measure up to society standards. Between 5th and 9th grade, gifted girls, perceiving that smarts aren't sexy, hide their accomplishments.

According to Beauty Redefined, based on studies done in the last five years, 66 percent of adolescent girls wish they were thinner, though only 16 percent are actually overweight.

And it is happening at younger and younger ages: A girl is 10 years-old when she starts emulating models she sees in ads and feeling deficient. Between 20 and 40 percent of 10 year-olds start dieting. Girls start pretending they are not that smart, because "smart" and "sexy" are more often than not portrayed as mutually exclusive binaries.

On a broad cultural scale, the impact of lower self esteem, a loss of a sense of agency and a perception that your worth is bound up in your attractiveness to men has serious consequences for equity. It's why I keep mentioning the movie Miss Representation, which traces the effects of mass media on girls and culture and illustrated the degree to which television, movies, videos, lyrics, magazine, the Internet and advertisements portray images of girls and women in a sexual manner, as the primary model of femininity for girls to emulate to the exclusion of almost everything else.

So, media messages both establish unhealthy, unrealistic ideals of thinness, sexiness and beauty while causing low self-esteem generated by a failure to meet those ideals.

Girls are working this out every day on Facebook. When they collectively post and comment, I think they are grappling with these issues in the way they can best. They acknowledge the reality of the situation that thin and pretty are important (sexy is really good, too), while trying to be supportive and complimentary, to offset the negative consequences of being held to this ridiculous and fetishized ideal of contemporary female beauty.

For me, it's simple, as long as we have gender equity imbalances -- in pay equity, political representation, story-telling (media), resource allocation -- then the currency of a female's worth will remain the way she looks because the primary traditional way of achieving agency in a woman's life has been to align herself with a man with the best access to resources. Resources to which women have had a vicarious relationship: money, property, political power, safety. Undoubtedly women's and girls' position in the world have improved enormously due to the fight for equal rights, but mainstream messages clearly continue to portray the world through the lens of girls and women as fetishized, feminine helpmeets.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the question "Why did she do that?" because it is often wielded as a weapon to blame girls and women for the ways in which they adapt to living in a sexist culture. My daughters, my nieces, their friends and teammates aren't, for the most part, obsessing in a single-minded way on their looks. They're just having fun, messing around with friends online. Yes, there is the usual focus on clothes, appearance, hair -- but they are working hard at being good students, healthy athletes and kind people. And, indeed, my daughters will mock me relentlessly when this posts for my concern since they are "Just fine, Mom!" And, yes, I know that athletics, particularly team sports, are a great way to build a great, healthy body-image for girls. It take more than that, however, to offset the relentless beauty pressure that girls are subjected to (as illustrated in this Dove campaign video that made the rounds last year).

However, it is still unsettling to me that what all of these girls, being educated in one of the fairest, most equitable societies on the planet, still chose to share in public: how they look instead, with the exception of "liking" things, what they do and what their opinions are. It's a tall order for any teen to go out on a limb to do these things -- but for girls in this context, where beauty and smarts are still in conflict and where looks are so important -- it's even harder.

There are many great resources, books and organizations working to change mass media's representation of a girls' value being rooted in her appearance and sex appeal. Check out the following if you are interested:

She Heroes 7 Wonderlicious  Black Girl Project Adios Barbie Princess Free Zone Powered by Girls Black Girls Rock! Spark Movement Miss Representation BrainCake Pigtail Pals Girls' Leadership Institute

There is a short list, others can also be found here. In addition to addressing the first world issues of (compared to the rest of the world) affluent and educated girls who can afford to be on FaceBook, there are many organizations with similar goals internationally that you can find here at Amazing Women Rock -- an award winning web site and resource center which was started after its founder, Susan Macaulay, found that "women tend not to "blow their own horns," and as a result miss out on a lot of opportunities that life has to offer" -- that includes telling girls and boys that girls can aspire, with reasonable hope and ambition, to contribute to the greater good by more than just looking good.

Thanks, Likers!

  Follow Soraya Chemaly on Twitter: www.twitter.com/schemaly

[arcyandolivia]

Some free publicity for Will Ferrell's new movie. I must admit I am throughly impressed with Will Ferrell's spanish. Looking forward to this movie. 

http://ology.com/screen/casa-de-mi-padre-featurette-incredible/02282012

[arcyandolivia]

You gotta be kidding me when a contender for Best Animated Film for the Academy Award 2011 has an original soundtrack by Bebo Valdés yet all the Academy could come up with for best song was TWO SONGS. The Academy is retarded, yes, I said it, RETARDED. 

CLICK HERE FOR CHICO Y RITA PRESS KIT

CHICO & RITA

Animation, Trueba/Mariscal/Errando, 2010, 94 minutes Oscar®-winning director Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque, Calle 54) and Spain’s legendary illustrator Javier Mariscal celebrate their passion for the music and culture of Cuba with an epic story of love, passion, and heartbreak. Cuba, 1948. Chico is a young piano player with big dreams. Rita is a beautiful singer with an extraordinary voice. Music and desire unite them as they chase their dreams and each other from Havana to New York to Paris, Hollywood and Las Vegas. With an original soundtrack by legendary Cuban pianist and five-time Grammy®-winning composer Bebo Valdés, Chico & Rita captures a defining moment in the evolution of history and jazz, and features the music of (and animated cameos by) Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Cole Porter, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Tito Puente, Chano Pozo, and others. Soundtrack now available on Calle 54 Records / Sony Music US Latin. 

[arcyandolivia]

Arcy

Oct 1976-Feb 1997

[arcyandolivia]

FIVE MINUTES WITH COMEDIAN GRAYDON SHEPPARD

If you still haven’t seen the original Shit Girls Say video—the viral send-up of a certain brand of girlish idiocy—then you’ve surely seen one of the hundreds of imitations that have clogged the Internet recently, some as hilarious as the original but most unfunny flops. Thank Canadian-born Graydon Sheppard and his boyfriend Kyle Humphrey for the meme, which has burrowed its way into the pop cultural psyche. Here, Sheppard talks about performing in drag, his prolific Twitter feed, and holding hands with Ryan Gosling.- W mag

Read More http://www.wmagazine.com/w/blogs/thedailyw/2012/02/06/comedian-graydon-sheppard-talks-about-shit-girls-say.html#ixzz1liNKqYcL

[arcyandolivia]

MASTER PIECES

the frame work for every spring look

The movement on this page is gorgeous. Inspiring. 

[arcyandolivia]

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[arcyandolivia]

The importance of failure - for effective learning, growth mindset, and quality through experimentation.

[arcyandolivia]

"Love is kind of like when you see a fog in the morning, when you wake up before the sun comes out. It’s just a little while, and then it burns away… Quickly.  Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.”