Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch...

Hello loves! It's been ages, but I promise there's been a good reason! This year has been a wonderful messy amalgamation of projects and plans that have completely bogged me down. But it's a great problem to have so I can't complain. 

As you might remember, last year I was named as the inaugural fellow for Bitch Media's Writing Fellowship in Pop Culture. Additionally, I'm a month out from the due date of my dissertation for my MA in Mass Communications. All that's on top of my day job! Unfortunately that meant my blog has been a little neglected of late, but it doesn't mean I haven't been writing and reading and learning. I've published some essays I'm very proud of with Bitch Media, and there are more on the way.

"Racebending rebooted franchises allows us to add diverse perspectives to the existing canon of culturally significant narratives, present minority characters in a way that better reflects our varied experiences, and escape the material dangers that a single story can present."-Reboot and Rally: The Revolutionary Opportunities Inherent In Reupping Franchise Favourites

To hear pop culture tell it, no man has ever unabashedly loved a Black woman without "taming her" first. It's significant to have a Black woman who embraces her inner "savage" be acknowledged as the prize that she is: beautiful, successful, ambitious and not at all in search of a partner. 
-Performance Anxiety: Why I'm Here To Watch Drake Worship Rihanna

While Wiley is right that art reflects life and vice versa, she skipped an essential step: Art is meant not just to reflect life, but to comment on it. To distill a universal truth about the mundane lives we live and supply us with a greater understanding of ourselves. The artist’s responsibility is not simply to reproduce the violence that exists, but to deconstruct it. What did this season of OITNB add to the conversation about police brutality that hadn’t already been said? How was this plotline any different from a simple reproduction of Black trauma?-On "Orange Is The New Black" and the Destruction of The Black Body

The stories we tell about ourselves do not exist in a vacuum. As I often say, pop culture is a feedback loop that is both sustained by and contributes to the ways we see ourselves as a society and in relation to each other, so it’s frightening to know that at a cultural level, Black women are considered inconsequential, that our stories exist as incidental to those of white men and women. As Mary McNamara wrote at the Los Angeles Times, “These characters should not be used as seasoning or garland to give a white man’s story a little spice, a little color. They should be telling their stories too, in ways that don’t call for the ultimate sacrifice quite so often.” Television’s boast of increased diversity is meaningless if its stories reinforce the trope that Black female characters are expendable. -When Visibility Isn't Enough: Abigail Mills and the Failed Promised of "Sleepy Hollow"

I have two more wonderful essays in the pipeline and a magazine feature for Bitch Magazine about performative misandry in online feminist spaces (hence Beyoncé.) In a month I'll have graduated and be free to finally start my secret project that I won't divulge here in case I change my mind. This year has been hectic and stressful but I've gotten to write about things that I'm passionate about and be guided by wonderful editors who helped make me a better writer. I'm excited for what 2017 will bring for me, but honestly I'm just trying to get through 2016! I'm so grateful that even though I haven't posted in months, people are still here everyday reading the things I've written and finding value in my work. It's part of what gives me the confidence to pursue my writing professionally. Onward to the new year!

Announcing Bitch Media's Newest 2016 Fellowship Writer: Me!

via Bitch Media

I'll cut to the chase. I'm incredibly happy and proud to announce that I've been selected as one of the four inaugural Bitch Media Writing Fellows. I almost can't believe that I get to write those words. I have been holding my breath and stalking the Bitch Media twitter page ever since I submitted my application because I was so nervous and so sure that it was a long shot. But by some miracle (and I guess, my writing...) I was accepted! It's such great news at a time when I really needed great news. When I was younger, my dad taught me a lesson that has served me incredibly well to this day: "The worst they can say is no." It's been a mantra that has given me the courage to try new things when I was afraid to fail. Even if I did fail, I'd be no worse off that I was before. I'd been saying for a while that I wanted to get serious about my writing and this fellowship was a great opportunity. After all, no one can say "yes" if I never ask. So I asked. I submitted my application, full of nervous energy and doubts, and hoped for the best. And Bitch Media said yes!

The fellowship program will be running in quarterly increments and I'll be working from April 1 to June 30. My focus will be pop-culture criticism, so I'm very excited to be able to write about what I have loved writing about for the last couple years. Mostly I'm excited to be properly edited. Like most artists, I can be a little defensive about my work, but the few times I have been well edited, I have always left the experience feeling like my writing had substantially improved. With that said, I don't have much else to add (too busy eating ice cream and happy-sobbing) so instead of rambling on, I'm including the cover letter I submitted with my application. It explains why I wanted this so badly, and why I'm so incredibly proud that I've been given opportunity. 

*****

Pop culture is political. In my opinion, pop culture has the innate potential to be either one of society’s greatest benefits or one of its greatest ills. It is a reflection of the way we as a society see ourselves and of the values that we tolerate and cherish at any given point in history, and that’s precisely why it’s so important to me.

Image and representation is an issue that’s close to my heart because of the way we see its effects ripple through society. Whether it’s the negative repercussions of poor representations of women or the symbolic annihilation of minority people through their absence in pop culture all together, popular media is an fertile breeding ground for germinating the seeds of social change and that’s why I spend so much time immersed in it; highlighting the things that improve us as a society, and critiquing the things that don’t. We have seen time and time again that attitudes that are widely represented in pop culture can have a profound effect on what a society believes to be true. Continued negative representation has successfully been used in the past to demonize entire groups of people, and justify violence against them. The repercussions of pop culture representations run deeper than we give them credit for.

This is especially true as it relates to the stories that we tell about women of colour. Mostly we don’t tell them at all, but when we do, we steep them in antiquated stereotypes that diminish their humanity and position them as disposable. As a black woman living in a Caribbean country that imports 99% of its content from the West, I’m sensitive to the connections that can be drawn between dismissive representations of women who look like me, and the corresponding way news stories are framed when we are victimized.

I’m not an American, but I’ve grown up on American media. I’ve situated myself through exposure to what I was not; thin, white, blonde and blue-eyed. I’ve come through the fire; first loathing myself because I did not exist, then questioning myself when the existence I saw did not match my reality, and finally finding myself anew when I began to understand the wider forces at play when it comes to the export of Western ideals to the global South. Through my writing on pop culture I’ve been able to explore all the ways our identities and intersections influence the way we see the world and through my current graduate study program in Mass Communications I’ve been able to explore more informed perspectives about how the media we experience is created, distributed and consumed, up to and including portrayals of rape in television; the subject of my final thesis.

Reading Bitch Media online over the last year has shown me that I’m not the only person who understands these larger functions, and being able to work with you would enable me to further develop my understanding of the importance of pop culture and write about the way it wends itself into everything we know about ourselves. I honestly believe that I would be a great fit at Bitch Media, and I truly hope that we will be working together soon. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

Here Is A Thing That Happened: I Accidentally Went Viral // Miley-Gate 2013

On Monday 26th August, 2013, I published an article entitled Solidarity Is For Miley Cyrus: The Racial Implications Of Her VMA Performance. The article quickly went viral, accumulating over one million views, 700 comments, and 100K facebook shares in a little over 24 hours. That does not include the traffic that this blog received from cross-posting the article.

Response was divided, but largely positive, with many people emailing me personally to thank me for the piece, and a number of influential people reposting and discussing the article. This is a summary of the events that led up to my writing the article.

Comments Are Now Closed

The response to the Miley article has been way, WAY disproportionate to what I was expecting. While I've gotten some really sincere positive feedback, I've also had to deal with some devious trolling and personal attacks, and I'm not really able to deal with all of it on my own.

So the comments on this blog (and on the original article over at groupthink) are now closed indefinitely. I will likely never turn the GT comments back on, but the comments here will be back as soon as I think the trolls that have been circling find something else to do with their time.

I'm just one person, and I can't deal with all of the moderation on my own, and frankly this whole thing is stressing me out. So I'm taking a mental health sabbatical, and simply making this space a rhetorical one until further notice. 

To my new readers, I hope you will stay, and that you find other content here that you find engaging. I haven't forgotten you, and I've very grateful for your eyes, and your time. To all the people who have shared and tweeted and commented, I'm grateful for your willingness to be part of this discussion, and engage in meaningful dialogue about an important issue.

And to the ladies and gents of GT, you are the tits and I love you so much for being so amazing and helping me deal with the massive spectacle this has become. I deeply treasure my Trouser award and I have never felt so appreciated!

In Which I Am Now Peggy Olsen OR I Got A JOB You Guys....

via Freshed Baked Sketches

I am employed. So basically a miracle happened.

I started last Friday, and I'm now officially a copywriter at an advertising firm. I won't say where yet because I don't know if I'm allowed to and I had to sign some scary looking confidentiality contracts...

I'M PEGGY YOU GUYS.

My middle name is even Margaret.

FOR SERIOUS.

Okay now that I've indulged myself and compared myself to Peggy Olsen, (as if) I actually really like this job. I mean, it's been a week, so it might be too early for sweeping assessments, but everyone is really nice, the work is fun and challenging, we drink rum on Fridays.... it's pretty sweet! I'm excited to do a little more and have more responsibility because bored is essentially death to me, and I want to feel like I'm earning my keep.

The only thing that sucks is having to get up at 5AM to beat the traffic and get into town on time. I have been sleeping until 10AM for FOUR YEARS. This responsibility shit is HARD. But it's worth it because getting to work early means an awesome parking spot! Basically, I haven't been here long enough to know anything, but so far, I like what I see and I'm excited to do more and learn more.

And I can't wait until I pull a total Peggy and start running my own department!

Refocusing for 2012

This year will hopefully be a year of milestones for me. If everything goes according to plan, I'll be graduating university, starting grad school, and moving to New York all before the year is up. I'm excited and hopeful, and I can't wait.

Rachel Roy sketch for The Hunger Games. I promise to be this awesome in 2012.

In addition to finally taking on adult responsibilities this year, I'm going to be trying to make some serious changes to this blog. I've been blogging for almost 3 years now, and in that time, I've learned so much about the fashion industry and about the blogosphere, and the relationship between the two. I've made mistakes, and I've learned from them, and for 2012, I'd like to be more active about defining this space in a way better matches up with my interests in the fashion industry.

In October when I was at TVFU, I got some great advice from Teen Vogue EIC, Amy Astley. She said that in writing a blog, you should try to "create what you would want to see." As a fashion blogger whose focus is photography, there are a very limited number of blogs that focus exclusively on photography that I can emulate. Most fashion/photo blogs are street style blogs, and not necessarily what I want to aspire to. So for 2012, I'm changing that. I'm rebranding, defining the new Promiscuous Lola, and dedicating myself to being more creative about narrowing my focus.

So far, I have a number of things planned. I'm excited and nervous and freaking out, but the anticipation of finally being sure of what I want this space to be is as overwhelming as it is exhilarating. So, here are my blog resolutions for 2012. Two weeks late, but just as valid!

• Refine/Rebrand/Refocus: I'd been thinking about rebranding for a while now, but I only just found the courage. So, now that I'm basically starting over this blog with a new identity, I have to spend some time refining what that means, and how drastically I will be changing direction. In changing over to the new URL, there were some glitches with the photographs. I have no idea what's happened or why, but since I haven't figured it out, I've decided to abandon the broken posts. In the next few weeks, I won't be posting anything new, just going through the archives and deleting all the broken posts. I'm going to try to salvage my more important posts, but my archives will be severely be gutted. I haz a sad now. But, at the same time, it's a new opportunity to start fresh, with all the information that I've learned about blogging and fashion in the last 2 years. We'll see where it takes me. 

• Street Style Photography: I've been saying for ages that I want to post more street style shots. Now that I have the time, the equipment and the experience, I really want to make a bigger push to develop my eye for street style. I've missed doing this for College Fashionista, and there's no reason why I shouldn't continue, even if it's just to keep my "approaching strangers and photographing them" skill nice and fresh!

• Editorial Style Writing: Over the last few years, I've written for a number of online publications in order to build my writing experience, however in the last few months, I've found that there are a number of things that I want tot write about that aren't necessarily appropriate topics for those forums. I have a lot to say about a lot of things, so where better to say them than in the space that I've cultivated for me? This year, I'd like to take more time to expand on the issues that affect me, and are important to me, and to continue developing my writing skills at the same time.

• Regular/Manageable Schedule: I've changed the posting schedule several time over the last few years, but this year, I'd like to develop one that is easy to follow even when I get overwhelmed with classes. I love this blog and my few faithful readers, and I don't want to alienate them by being unreliable. I have a number of features I'd like to retain, and a few more I'd like to introduce, so I'll be rolling them out by the beginning of February.

• 365 Challenge: I've been meaning to start a 365 challenge for a couple of years now, and I've decided that this year I'm going to DO IT! As a photographer, I should be training myself to be ready to capture any and everything around me, and I think that a 365 challenge is the best way to do that. It will force me to see the places around me in a new way, and to look for the interesting things in my environment. It will also help me train myself to always be ready to capture the things that are going on around me.

So there they are. Five, manageable goals for the new year. Here's to hoping I keep them!

Taking the Leap

I've decided that the only way to develop my eye for photography is to take more photographs. So, here we are. Welcome to my photography/fashion blog. Here I'll post my work, and the work of other people that I'm aspiring to be like. Photography is a difficult and amazing profession, and I can't wait to be part of such a rewarding field. Here's to hoping I don't royally mess things up!