Tag Archives: 21st century

A letter to my fresher self

4 Feb

Dear my fresher self,

Congratulations for choosing to study English and History, I know that careful decision took a long time. You’ve been accepted at Leeds and secured the accommodation you wanted at Clarence Dock. It must feel like you have everything worked out. That’s nice. Four years later you’ll have an arts degree under your belt yet still no grand life plan. Whatever people tell you, not knowing what you want to do for the rest of your life at 21 really is OK.

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Packing for the big move…

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My first year student halls

Despite choosing a Northern university you will spend most of your degree socialising with Southerners who talk about how great London is. In your final year, you will meet employers at networking events who will tell you about the benefits of moving to London and about how great London is. Be prepared to defend the North, love.

Don’t rush out to buy any of the set texts- especially not from the almighty rip-off that is Blackwells- find the books in the library or get them cheap on amazon.

There was really no need to email your tutor about missing the welcome lecture. Nobody takes attendance there, just a heads up.

Students can be…how should I put it…ruthless individuals. If you are late removing your laundry from the washing machine by even a minute you will find your freshly washed clothes gathering dust on the floor. 310607_10150832245100113_2023834161_n

Carnage is the most overpriced, overhyped and despicable sequence of events that could possibly be strung together in exchange for your precious money. It won’t do your bank account, your waistline, your self-esteem or your general well being any good. Please, just, don’t go.

Stop buying new fancy dress items for every fancy dress night out. That’s not what your student loan is for. Geek glasses and some face paint will suffice. 298520_10150899680830113_2003306070_n299800_10150918622820113_8638098_n

The Hidden Café is not a cutesy little coffee place you discovered by the miracle of getting lost in Freshers’ week. It is the most conspicuous place on campus to take your laptop, eat overpriced lunches and pretend that you are working.

There’s a corridor that connects the Edward Boyle library to the Roger Stevens Building- yes, really. Find it and use it- unless you in fact prefer climbing 10 flights of stairs and arriving at all of your English lectures sweating.

After your first year you’ll go on a life-changing trip to Costa Rica, during which staying in the jungle will make you feel as if you could conquer any living situation life will throw at you. But living in a below average student house with a broken boiler through the winter months in Leeds will make you drastically reconsider that statement. 199123_10152091047120113_1095390777_n

During your third year you’ll find yourself in South Carolina, enjoying a whirlwind year of cowboy boots and sweet tea, country music and American football, rock-climbing and travelling all over the US: basically having more fun and learning more life lessons than the rest of your university years combined. You’ll also hear about how great London is from Americans who went there once when they were 12. Savour that year, because time flies faster than a Gamecock when you’re studying abroad. 1148862_10153153567195113_790654073_n1267851_10153197620035113_1460927503_o

Returning to Leeds for a final year spent in the library will feel like the world’s biggest comedown. It is. The study abroad blues never go away, especially when you insist on putting peanut butter and jam on your porridge every morning. Make sure you stick to your hobbies and passions more tightly than ever before during fourth year, as you’ll need them in order to feel like a sane human being who is more than just a degree.
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If I had to end with one piece of advice for your impending university experience, it would be to make it yours. Don’t get sucked in to what everyone else might be doing, because comparison kills joy. Don’t  compete with anybody but your former self: know your own values, priorities and goals and focus on exceeding those. Student life is your precious time to start figuring out who you’re going to be, so make it yours and get stuck in. 1229944_10153197588695113_295444563_n (1)

Kim Kardashian is just another battle in the cyber war over women’s bodies

14 Nov

The naked pictures may not have broken the internet, but they have proven a point about the extent to which the female body has become a digital commodity

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Kim Kardashian’s hyper-sexualised naked body is this week’s internet ballyhoo. Her greased behind, paraded by Paper Magazine as the photoshoot to ‘break the internet’, has been glistening in every dark corner of cyberspace. Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress- you name it- internet users have been unable to turn a corner without being visually confronted by Kim K in the raw.

As with all nude internet sensations, the photos have sparked a furore of polarising debates. Aside from Kim’s robot fans who have applauded her with automatic adoration, humans with brains have raised a variety of issues with the photos, from the representation of her naked body: completely hairless and oiled up, the backlash against her being a sexualised mother, the way in which a female body in and of itself can create superstardom, and the racial undertones to the images.

Some may well defend the photos as female empowerment- ‘women are entitled to do what they want’, or as just another unsurprising day in the internet world- ‘women get naked on the internet all the time, what’s the big deal?’

Fair play. Just last week, Kiera Knightley got her breasts out for a photo-shoot and comedian Tig Notaro performed an entire set, topless. Sadly, as an internet user of the 21st century, the persistent appearance of women’s bodies in the media has rendered me desensitised to seeing them at regular intervals throughout my day, whether I like it or not.

But the difference between Kiera and Kim is that they’re standing at opposite ends of the internet battlefield. While Kiera posed topless on the condition that she wasn’t photo-shopped, making a point about the great variety of women’s natural body shapes, Kim went nude to break the internet. Bravo. As ever, she wasn’t trying to convey anything inspiring or profound. At most, the photos are a continuation of Jean-Paul Goude’s trademark ‘art’ that sexualises the black female body. At least, they’re a sensational attempt to generate an infamous media reputation. Gossip= clicks, and clicks = money.

The photos are standing in a long line of recent internet battles over women’s bodies. The leaked nude photo scandal brought issues of authorisation and consent under the spotlight. Calvin Klein’s size 10 model begged the question, ‘Which size is plus size?’, and Victoria’s Secret’s ‘Perfect Body’ campaign sparked a torrent of bullets against the promotion of one limiting archetype of the female body. Screen Shot 2014-11-14 at 15.26.52

Whether each of these debates have been settled in a positive or negative light- or not at all- the sheer frequency and ferocity with which women’s bodies are being verbally attacked, defended and dissected on the internet demonstrates the disheartening reality that the internet has fast become a battleground for the female form. Women’s bodies are being pushed back and forth in internet spats, as lifeless pawns to be claimed or defended like territory. They’re hostage to cyberspace whether the women behind the bodies like it or not.

I might be a dreamer, but I look forward to the dawn of web utopia: the day that women’s naked bodies aren’t plastered so freely all over the internet. But if they are, the best possible public response will be one of complete and utter indifference. That’s the day we’ll know that women’s bodies have ceased to become the hotly contested benchmark against which we measure the value of women themselves.

In this sense, Kim’s photos are nothing new, just another battle amid a war that’s already raging.

What continues to bother me about the photos is that they edge closer to achieving their lurid goal of ‘breaking the internet’ every time they get talked about- praise or no praise.

So please, can we stop liking, sharing and talking about Kim Kardashian’s body and use the internet for something a little more worth our time? Quick, somebody grab an iPhone and pass me the ice bucket.

Edgy Leeds: has the phenomenon come full circle?

4 Nov Screenshot_2014-09-26-11-47-47-1

Comparing student fashion fads from South Carolina to Leeds: do all edgy nonconformists now look the same?

Since returning from my study abroad adventure in South Carolina and delving into a whirlwind schedule of final-year studies at Leeds, I’ve started to appreciate certain aspects of British university culture in a new light.

While the edgy Leeds phenomenon is nothing new to me, coming back to campus after a year away has made the grungy, vintage, second-hand look seem even more distinct than ever.

For anyone who hasn’t stumbled across what it means to be edgy in Leeds, all you have to do is (look out the window) or Google ‘edgy Leeds’ to get the gist. There you’ll find numerous news articles by The Tab and The Gryphon mulling over the trend, and the Twitter accounts of ‘edgy girl’ and ‘edgy boy Leeds’, tweeting utter gems like:

The nucleus lying at the core of the stereotype is a student dressing exclusively in vintage, second-hand clothing, wearing hand-made jewellery, (preferably accumulated from gap year travels) travel pants from India, oversized jumpers, Nike Air Max, stuff with holes in, (both deliberate and accidental), oversized scrunchies, chokers, and championing a refined taste for house music and borderline club nights the rest of us mainstream cattle haven’t a hope of knowing about.

The edgy look couldn’t offer a sharper contrast to the nature of college fads back in Columbia, South Carolina. Fashion trends in the Palmetto state are much more safe, careful, clean-cut and often preppy- as perfectly exemplified by the existence of a Ralph Lauren shop in the University of South Carolina’s student union, a sharp contrast against LUU’s in-house charity shop.

To any valiant South Carolinian hipsters out there: I know you exist, but you must know that to the observances of a foreign visitor, the majority outnumbers you remarkably.

As my year abroad progressed, I realised it wasn’t that the majority of students in South Carolina were simply unafraid of conformity, but that wearing similar items of clothing from the campus sports shop was a deliberate statement of solidarity: a pledge of loyalty to their beloved football team, their university, and their community.

If dressing alike in Garnet and Black is a statement of solidarity in South Carolina, dressing ‘edgy’ in Leeds is West Yorkshire’s irresistible fashion spin-off.

Except- and it’s a drastic exception- the edgy fashion phenomenon appears to make a statement of nonconformity, individuality and distinction rather than unanimity and team spirit, like our friends across the Atlantic.

The ultimate irony of the edgy fad is that so many people have jumped on the bandwagon that some are daring to tout it as ‘mainstream’. The effortless, alternative look that once began as a coveted trend only for those who knew its dark secrets, is coming full circle to create a sea of students treading through campus in swathes of chokers and a sea of oversized denim jackets. 

Surely, then- merely by innocent implication- mustn’t mainstream folk like me, who have been ignorant of the edgy fad from the outset, now be considered as truly edgy, wrapped in our block colour New Look cardigans and carrying our trusty River Island Handbags?

Edginess has quickly become an inescapable, polarising identity model. If I happen to like a vintage jumper or go to Flux, all of a sudden I’m accused of trying to imitate the over-saturated fad, whereas maybe, I rather plainly just like that jumper and I’d prefer to join my friends at Flux rather than sit at home on the sofa, agonising over the latent implications of my lifestyle choices amid a headache of conflated edgy-mainstream confusion.

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In the diverse society we live in, there are millions of ways to stand out from the crowd. Perhaps the edgy look does have individualistic intentions, but from the outside, it looks as if the outcome has created exactly the conventional, popular and common clothing phenomenon it set out to escape. The edgy innovators that began the trend, now scratching their half-shaved heads in despair, are probably better off moving to Columbia, South Carolina- a hipster’s utopia- where the fashion majority and minority remain strictly separate.

What the $50m BuzzFeed investment says about the modern-day media

13 Aug

Are listicles, gifs, videos and quizzes replacing quality long-form journalism?

What started out eight years ago as a hub of cat videos, listicles, trivia, gifs and quizzes has recently been valued at $850m (£506m) following a $50m investment from a US firm.

            Californian venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has given BuzzFeed a pivotal boost in the form of a $50m (£30m) investment, which now values the internet sensation at more than three times as much as the Washington Post. The firm’s investment in the site has grown from their prediction that BuzzFeed is set to become a top-level digital company.  

News of the investment was released on Monday

News of the investment was released on Monday

            The funding signals another push in the direction of online media and confirms much of what we already know about the digital shift. The advent of digital journalism is well and truly underway and print is fast becoming a sinking ship. While newspapers are sure to become a dot on the horizon in the next few decades, websites, blogs and social media outlets are the new kid on the media block- and they’re here to stay. 

            BuzzFeed is one of the most renowned websites for capitalising on the digital shift. Although the website has recently hauled in hundreds new recruits in an attempt to report on mainstream news and features (politics, the Ebola outbreak, the Gaza conflict) it’s best known for creating breezy content that’s sharable across online platforms. 

Buzzfeed creates material that's easy to digest on laptops, mobiles and tablets

Buzzfeed creates material that’s easy to digest on laptops, mobiles and tablets

            Many of my Facebook friends and Twitter followers share BuzzFeed articles on a daily basis. They’re often posted with a reluctant disclosure that ‘I don’t normally share BuzzFeed stuff, but…’ and ‘This is probably a bit kitsch but I couldn’t resist sharing…’ followed by a listicle that glamourises, romantises, humourises or victimises the daily struggles and predicaments of a particular subgroup. Take, for example, ’27 Incredibly Annoying Things People Do To Bartenders’. It’s irresistible clickbait for anyone, anywhere who has ever worked behind a bar and prompts numerous discussions about which number made them laugh, which number reminded them of that hellish Valentine’s Day shift in 2008 and which number was so accurate they had to copy and paste the link and re-post the article themselves. 

            These articles typify many aspects of digital media and the kinds of things that consumers want to see when they browse online. Aside From A Questionable Tolerance Of BuzzFeed’s Tendency To Capitalise Their Every Headline (each to their own) the rise of BuzzFeed confirms our thirst for sharable, easily digestable, succinct, delightful, humourous, day-enhancing material. We also seem to like multi-media platforms that combine gifs, photos and videos with listicles, quizzes and articles. (BuzzFeed’s ‘Trending’ bar consists entirely of captionless photos.) 

Buzzfeed's header

Buzzfeed's trending bar is image-friendly

Buzzfeed’s trending bar is image-friendly

But I can’t ignore the fact that a website that has a ‘LOL Feed’, a ‘Cute Feed’, an ‘OMG Feed’ and a ‘WTF Feed’ is being dubbed as the next big thing on the media scene. I don’t doubt that BuzzFeed deserves such a title- it has, after all, successfully tapped into digital trends and consumer demands- but I worry about what the potential accession of BuzzFeed as a dominant media company says about the nature of our consumer demands in the first place. 

            Articles such as ’Weird Little Things All Couples Do’, ’23 Things Women Are Tired of Hearing’ and ‘21 Celebrities Who Prove Glasses Make Women Look Super Hot’- besides demonstrating a short-sighted willingness to tarring all couples and all women with the same brush- are simply self-justifying articles that social media users can regurgitate to legitimise how they’re feeling at any given moment. It’s closed-minded material that tells specific subgroups how to feel about other subgroups, and it’s not open for discussion.

            Then there’s the fact that listicles go against every English student grain of my being. BuzzFeed is like a giant slap in the face to everything I was taught at A-Level: it’s taking the numbered paragraph plan from my notes and forgetting to bother with the final product. Writing a listicle is much easier than crafting a nuanced, comprehensive, articulate, well-structured column consisting of those long-forgotten things we call ‘paragraphs’.

            But BuzzFeed is capable of winning over even the most orthodox among us. As a travel writer, ‘16 Encounters That Prove The World Is Smaller Than You Think’ totally got me clicking. As a cat-lover, I’m also lured in by ’13 Iconic Movies Improved By Cats’ and as a feminist, I really enjoyed ’18 Inventions By Women That Changed The World’. BuzzFeed has tapped into the likes and dislikes of just about anyone and is writing irresistibly light-hearted entertainment pieces that resonate perceptively with those interests. 

            We’re yet to find out whether the venture capital investment will bear fruit and BuzzFeed will become the website to reign over all. Perhaps if BuzzFeed is going to rise above conventional media companies it’ll have to ditch its associations with listicles anyway. But here’s a thought for the meantime: indulging in a listicle is great, every now and then, so long as it doesn’t replace an ability to read and write insightful, challenging and cutting-edge debates that don’t start every new point with a number. Call me a traditionalist, but I like to dream that the light-hearted side of the digital shift can move forward without casting a shadow on our good-old friend, quality.

Why 21st century feminism is a worthy fight

2 Dec

On Sunday night I attended a presentation held in South Quad about sexual violence and assault. After a couple of power-point slides about the parameters of sexual violence and rape legislation, the representative from Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention and Prevention, or ‘SAVIP’ opened up the floor for discussion. The speaker read out statements about hypothetical situations to which we had to hold up a red, yellow or green card to signify how appropriate we deemed each incident. I was incensed to hear one response from a guy who had shown a green card to the statement, ‘a woman leads a drunk guy upstairs at a party’. He said,
“This can mean two things. If it’s your girlfriend, then that’s great because it means you’re cashing in. If it’s not, then you should get the hell outta there because she’s probably trying to get a baby outta you.”
I was enraged by the suggestion that all women must be driven by the desire to either please men or use them as baby-making machines. After a heated debate, the discussion turned to the topic of victim blaming. The representative explained how rape is a heinous crime no matter what victims were wearing or their level of intoxication. A green-carder from across the room piped up,
“But come on, you go out to Five Points at Halloween and you see loads of girls dressed as black cats. You can’t say they aren’t asking for it”
Since when did I live in a world that suggests women dress to entice rapists? The women in the room launched into a verbal reproach, spelling out that women should be able to wear what they want without being labeled as a temptress- or as anything, for that matter. If this guy was suggesting that the only reason for provocative dress was to prompt sexual abuse, then what did he have to say for the increasing number of 14-year-olds who wear denim hot-pants because they want to look like Nicki Minaj? Are these young girls ‘asking for it’ too?
The biggest shock of the night came when the representative told us about the egregious Instagram phenomenon known as ‘#rapeface’. There are over 40,000 #rapeface photos on Instagram, in which users take a picture of themselves pulling a face they’d make if they saw someone they’d like to rape. The #rapeface trend is a gross trivialization of traumatizing sexual assault, and it needs to stop.

Feminists of today may not be fighting for the right to vote, but it’s moments like this that remind me that the battle against discrimination is far from over. Twenty-first century sex discrimination is of a completely different nature compared to the institutionalized prejudices of the 1970s. Women’s rights advocates must adapt to the grossly insidious nature of modern-day sexism if we don’t want to go down in history as the generation that well and truly settled for less.
As I swiftly put this guy and his misogynistic comments in in their place, I heard sighs across the room from his friends. There have been few periods in American history when feminism hasn’t been labeled as a horde of menstruating, grumpy man-haters, and at this moment I felt like they were lumping me in to this mistaken stereotype. As a moderate feminist I believe that the primary goal of feminism is to uplift the status of women so that it rests on an equal plane to men- I’m not ‘crazy’, and I don’t hate men. If people are too weary to make mental notes when their speech offends others, I begin to wonder when everyone started getting so tired. We women are pretty damn tired too, but it doesn’t mean we’re giving up the fight.

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