Quickies

Quickies: Superhero Costumes That Only Exist to Show Boobs, Chastity Belts are a Lie, and Privilege in Science Fairs

  • My Second Great-Grandmother Was a Southern Outlaw—and a Slave – “After Missouri Daniel Blackard—a freedwoman who was born a slave in 1840—witnessed her father’s assassination, she had one thing in mind: vengeance.”
  • Kate Beaton On Cloak And Dagger – And *That* Costume – Cloak and Dagger is a comic series featuring one character who wears a long cloak, and one who wears a spandex suit with a strategic cut-out of a dagger. Guess which one is played by a woman? (From Alex. )Bonus: her latest Hark! A Vagrant comic riffs on this too! (By the way, any link that references a woman’s superhero suit is automatically NSFW.)
  • Black Trauma Remixed For Your Clicks – “In viral videos, the real-life pain of black people is repurposed into fun, catchy songs for popular consumption. But at what cost?”
  • Monica Lewinsky: ‘The shame sticks to you like tar’ – “Lewinsky was once among the 20th century’s most humiliated people, ridiculed across the world. Now she’s a respected and perceptive anti-bullying advocate. She gives talks at Facebook, and at business conferences, on how to make the internet more compassionate. She helps out at anti-bullying organisations like Bystander Revolution, a site that offers video advice on what to do if you’re afraid to go to school, or if you’re a victim of cyberbullying.”
  • Science fairs are as flawed as my solar-powered hot dog cooker – “The only reason Veronica was able to carry out her experiment was that I had the flexibility to spend hours struggling through paperwork, and because I had a social network of scientists I’ve developed as a science writer. This was an exercise in privilege.”
  • Everything You’ve Heard About Chastity Belts Is a Lie – “Yes, it sounds simultaneously ridiculous, barbarous and extremely unhygienic, but…medieval men, you know? It was a different time. This, at least, has been the story that’s been told for hundreds of years. It’s simple, shocking, and, on some level, fun, in that it portrays past people as exceeding backwards and us, by extension, as enlightened and just better. It’s also, mostly likely, very wrong.” (Top image is NSFW if old drawings of boobs are frowned upon at your work.)
  • Vanity Fair Cover Story: The Set of Kramer vs. Kramer Was Basically ‘Streep vs. Hoffman’ – ” ‘He was goading her and provoking her,’ [film executive Richard] Fischoff recalled, ‘using stuff that he knew about her personal life and about John to get the response that he thought she should be giving in the performance.’ “

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Mary

Mary Brock works as an Immunology scientist by day and takes care of a pink-loving princess child by night. She likes cloudy days, crafting, cooking, and Fall weather in New England.

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One Comment

  1. South Park referenced Lewinsky yesterday. (Admittedly it was a rerun, first airing in 2011.) So much for fame (or ignominy) having a half-life of 15 minutes.

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