# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Saying she doesn't want other kids to suffer the way she did, supermodel Hanne Gaby Odiele has announced that she was born intersex - and she wants to "break the stigma" that can lead to intersex children having surgery to align them with the male or female gender.

"I'm excited to let the world know I'm intersex," Odiele says, in a sequence of videos produced with the advocacy group interACT. In them, she tells intersex children to "embrace your uniqueness." She also urges parents and doctors to allow intersex children to determine their own identities.

"People want to put us in a box - male or female - but in reality sex is on a spectrum," she says. "Intersex is just proof of that."

Odiele was born with androgen insensitivity syndrome - a condition in which a person is born with both X and Y chromosomes, but the person's body does not respond to male hormones, according to a description by the National Institutes of Health.

"Like most intersex kids, I've been subjected to irreversible, unconsented, unnecessary surgeries," Odiele says. "These surgeries have caused way more harm than good."

Discussing her surgeries in an interview with USA Today, Odiele says she underwent a procedure when she was 10 to remove undescended testes and then had vaginal reconstructive surgery eight years later. According to the NIH, undescended testes "have a small chance of becoming cancerous later in life if they are not surgically removed." In her message about AIS, Odiele says such surgeries shouldn't be carried out at an early age.

Odiele, 29, has been among the world's elite models for the past 10 years, appearing on the cover of Vogue and walking in fashion shows for Marc Jacobs, Chanel and Prada, among others. Along the way, she has also won fans for her enigmatic style that draws on street fashion. Last summer, the Belgian model married her longtime boyfriend, John Swiatek.

"Intersex people should be able to make their own choices about their bodies," Odiele says in one interACT video. "I'm speaking out because it's time this mistreatment comes to an end. It caused me way too much pain."

Saying that being intersex is roughly "as common as being born with red hair," the supermodel discussed being intersex in an Instagram video, leading many viewers to praise her for her bravery. Some of them had never heard of Odiele, or of being intersex.

But one comment came from another person who was born with AIS. Here's what that person had to say:

"I have AIS and I've hidden it from most of my family and all my friends - from the outside I look like any normal girl but feel ashamed of this secret because of society - I've learnt to love me and my body, but I can't control what others think so I hide it from the world... I admire you so much for this, you are amazing xxxx."

In another video, Odiele addresses the parents of intersex kids:

"Just love your child. There's no rush. Take your time, get informed. Get connected with other parents that've been in your shoes. Don't make any drastic decisions. Let your own child decide for what it wants to do or be."

In that video, Odiele also speaks to intersex children, telling them, "You can be whoever you want, whatever you want. Just be you."

As for how common it is for babies to be born intersex, estimates generally range from 1 in every 1,500 to 1 in every 2,000. As the American Psychological Association notes, intersex children are sometimes misdiagnosed - "and government agencies do not collect statistics about intersex individuals."

In a recent publication about intersex children, the group also acknowledged that there's a wide range of opinions on performing surgery to alter children's genitals to make them less ambiguous. The APA adds, "At this time, there is very little research evidence to guide such decisions."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'I'm Intersex,' A Supermodel Says, Hoping To End Stigma

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Saying she doesn't want other kids to suffer the way she did, supermodel Hanne Gaby Odiele has announced that she was born intersex - and she wants to "break the stigma" that can lead to intersex children having surgery to align them with the male or female gender.

# data[].attributes.body
A childrens book about how boys and girls can be and doing anything regardless of gender. I loved this book when I was little and I think the message is still contemporary

# data[].attributes.body
Insinuating that girls can't play as well as boys. Unfortunately I still like this movie, but it also reflects the 1960's gendered opinions

# data[].attributes.body
Body activists, Ashley Graham, Loving the body women are given, how living/modeling at a larger size is outside societal gendered norms.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our Privacy Policy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ashley Graham: Plus-size? More like my size

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When Ashley Graham first started her modeling career, she was followed everywhere by a label she hates: "plus-size model." Defying such regressive pigeonholing, she explains how she stopped devaluing herself and reclaimed her body as her own.

# data[].attributes.body
Written from her experience being belittled by men. That same year Ms. Magazine came out. Plus I just like how empowering the message is for all

# data[].attributes.body
Page 28 of text

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When RuPaul Charles was seven, one of his sisters comforted him with a promise. "Everyone who's in charge of the world now," she told him, "they're all making it better, so that years from now everyone on the planet will have at least eight pairs of shoes." Her prediction tells us something about the better world a young RuPaul dreamed of - and that, in the case of his own shoe collection, at least, turned out to be true. Before the boy was even born, a psychic had told his mother he would grow up to be famous, so she took great care to name him suitably. What neither his unusually prescient family - nor a single TV pundit - predicted, however, was that at the age of 57 he would be the star of what has been called "the most radical show on TV".

RuPaul's Drag Race was turned down by every network bar one when he first pitched the idea a decade ago. A pastiche of America's Next Top Model, part talent contest and part reality TV, the format selects a dozen or so drag queens to compete in weekly challenges such as running up a Gone With The Wind-themed gown out of curtains. A judging panel of RuPaul and guests, who have included Lady Gaga and La Toya Jackson, scores the catwalk finales, looking for Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve and Talent (the acronym is not an accident), and the bottom two then "lip-sync for their lives" to a pop anthem, before the loser is eliminated.

The show is about to enter its 10th season, the concept has evolved a little every year, and the queens take the contest very seriously, but I've never met anyone who actually cares who wins. What makes Drag Race addictive are the contestants' life stories and the group dynamics which break all the rules of reality TV by favouring camaraderie over cat fights. For all the artifice of their outfits, the queens make themselves emotionally naked for us, by turns poignant, comic, vulnerable and heroic. RuPaul performs the role of grand matriarch, and it's his unexpected humanity which both defines and elevates the show. As one Drag Race addict wrote in Esquire, "Drag Race is an endless reminder that it's possible to find love for others - and ourselves - despite all of the shit and the pain and the heartbreak we go through in life."

The contestants are all "showgirls" - professional drag queens - and part of the fun comes from watching the miracles they conjure; there is nothing these girls can't do with wigs and corsets and enough gaffer tape. Some are plus size, others comic, and some straightforward glamour girls - all unrecognisable out of costume - but beyond the pleasing reality TV formula of transformation, Drag Race is also wildly funny. The frenzied athleticism of the lip-sync challenge, the frantic panics over frocks, the fabulous names - Adore Delano, Tempest DuJour, Eureka O'Hara - all shimmer with knowing irony. Contestants are fluent in the vernacular of drag - "throwing shade" (criticising), "hog body" (an insufficiently hourglass figure), "Judy" (good friend) - making the show feel like an invite to a private party on another planet.

Bought by Logo TV, a tiny LGBT cable network, Drag Race became an instant hit, quickly crossing over to VH1, bringing the subculture of drag into middle America's living rooms. In the coming season, the guest judges will even include senior Democrat and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Each episode now averages well over a million viewers, the show is streamed all over the world, and last year RuPaul won his second consecutive Emmy and was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People.

We meet in a hotel near his West Hollywood home. All 6ft 4in of him appears in the lobby, alone, bang on time; he could not be less diva-ish. Though immaculately dressed in a navy checked suit, his manner is playfully informal, and the unwavering eye-contact accelerates the sense of instant intimacy. When we part 90 minutes later, he has wept three times, referenced astral chart movements as though the zodiac were the Dow Jones, and cited various psychics as unimpeachable authorities. He has a fondness for aphorisms - "We're born naked, everything else is drag" - and when he talks about "culture", he means the Kardashians. To infer from all this that he is a delightful airhead, however, would be a mistake. RuPaul is deeply serious, erudite and self-aware, and has clearly given a great deal of thought to everything he says. If the personal is political, RuPaul has been a radical from the day he was born.

"People have always been threatened by me as an African-American man, because of the inherent black rage that all black people have in our culture, the underlying black rage because of what happened to us in this country. It's always there; it's a glaring issue that's saying, 'First of all, let's talk about the black rage.' So one of the ways that I've been able to dilute that perception is to dress as a character that says, 'Look I'm fun, I can have a sense of humour about life because I'm in drag. I acknowledge black rage, but we're going to have some fun.' So then people are like, 'Oh, OK, so we can laugh together, we don't have to address the black rage.'"

He grew up the only son of four children to dirt-poor, "crazy-arse country hillbilly" parents in San Diego, who fought violently before separating when RuPaul was seven. By then he already knew he was different. "When I was a kid I thought, 'OK, I don't fit in, I know that, but I'm smart enough to figure out what I can do to fit in.'" He studied the gender norms and expectations around him and, "I thought, 'OK, I've got it, I want nothing to do with that. In fact I'm lucky that I don't fit in, because now I can play with all the toys and all the colours.'" Drag, laughter and cannabis were his coping mechanisms, and at 15 he moved to live with his sister and her husband in Atlanta, where he quickly hit the nightclub scene, before graduating to New York's downtown nightlife in his 20s.

A club dancer who did "comedy fright drag", he had a lot of fun, but by 28 was broke. "Nothing was clicking. It was my Saturn returns, and it was that crossroads. I wasn't sure if the prophecy [that he would be famous] was true." He weeps unselfconsciously at the memory of how close he came to abandoning his dreams. "But then I was like, 'You know what? I'm going to glam the fuck out.'" He shaved his legs and chest, "went glamazon," and nine months later was crowned Queen of Manhattan at a drag queen pageant, "the pinnacle of downtown success".

But at the end of his reign, he was horrified to see the New York dance act Deee-Lite enjoy global fame with Groove Is In The Heart. "These kids in the neighbourhood were actually behind me in terms of succession to stardom. I was like, 'Wait a minute, how'd they get up there?' It's because bitch you were fucking asleep in the party world, being the Queen of Manhattan. So, I said, 'OK, no, I've got to fix that. I'm not having that.'" He made a demo tape, got signed to a label, and on his 32nd birthday released the dance anthem Supermodel (You Better Work) which went on to be a smash hit. "And that's when my world changed for ever."

The 90s were a riot for RuPaul. An international superstar, he made albums, starred in movies, had his own chat show, and was signed up by Mac as the first male face of the cosmetics brand. But in 1999 he withdrew from public life and moved to LA, to get sober and quit smoking pot.

"Listen, I'm not the greatest actor. I'm not the greatest singer. I'm not the greatest drag queen. I'm not the greatest dancer. My gift has been having the clarity to hear the universe's stage directions and to take advantage of that. I knew it was finally time for me to approach the things I had pushed deep down inside." He breaks down and silently weeps again.

"I realised that my putting a cloud of smoke around myself, literally and figuratively, was a way to push down those feelings. So I got into therapy, and recalibrated what my purpose was, you know. I had gotten into show business as a kid to get validation from the world, get validation from my father. And I realised that would never satisfy. It has to come from the inside. So I came back to show business, but I do what I do now with this newfound motivation."

When his long-time producers suggested a drag reality show, RuPaul had one condition: "I don't want to do anything mean-spirited." The high camp of drag may appear superficially catty, he says, but in fact the essence of the art form is compassion.

"For people to do drag and make it their profession in a male-dominated culture, they have to go through so much emotional tug-of-war, because society says, 'You're not supposed to do that.' So, the strength and humanity it takes to maintain yourself and your dreams create many different layers of consciousness. That's where the humanity comes from."

RuPaul likes to speak in deeply heartfelt but somewhat opaque rhetorical flourishes, so I ask if he means that Drag Race has a political message about humanity.

"Yes! It doesn't have a political agenda in terms of policies in Washington. But it has a position on identity, which is really the most political you can get. It has politics at its core, because it deals with: how do you see yourself on this planet? That's highly political. It's about recognising that you are God dressing up in humanity, and you could do whatever you want. That's what us little boys who were maligned and who were ostracised figured out. It's a totem, a constant touchstone to say, 'Don't take any of this shit seriously.' It's a big f-you. So the idea of sticking to one identity - it's like I don't care, I'm a shapeshifter, I'm going to fly around and use all the colours, and not brand myself with just one colour."

Pinning him down on precisely what all of this means can be tricky, in part I think because he doesn't want to offend anyone by explicitly acknowledging the contradiction between his playfully elastic sensibility and the militant earnestness of the transgender movement. The two couldn't be further apart, I suggest.

"Ye-es, that's always been the dichotomy of the trans movement versus the drag movement, you know," he agrees carefully. "I liken it to having a currency of money, say English pounds as opposed to American dollars. I think identities are like value systems or currencies; there's not just one. Understand the value of different currencies, and what you could do with them. That's the place you want to be." But to a transgender woman it's critically important that the world recognises her fixed identity as a female. RuPaul nods uneasily. "That's right, that's right."

What I can't understand is how transgender women can enter a drag contest. Last year RuPaul's Drag Race was widely acclaimed for featuring its first openly transgender contestant, called Peppermint - but if transgender women must be identified as female, how can they also be "men dressing up as women"?

"Well, I don't like to call drag 'wearing women's clothes'. If you look around this room," and he gestures around the hotel lobby, "she's wearing a shirt with jeans, that one's wearing jeans and a T-shirt, right? So women don't really dress like us. We are wearing clothes that are hyperfeminine, that represent our culture's synthetic idea of femininity."

In the subculture of drag you do occasionally find what are known as "bio queens" - biological women who mimic the exaggerated femininity of drag. Would RuPaul allow a biological woman to compete on the show? He hesitates. "Drag loses its sense of danger and its sense of irony once it's not men doing it, because at its core it's a social statement and a big f-you to male-dominated culture. So for men to do it, it's really punk rock, because it's a real rejection of masculinity."

So how can a transgender woman be a drag queen? "Mmmm. It's an interesting area. Peppermint didn't get breast implants until after she left our show; she was identifying as a woman, but she hadn't really transitioned." Would he accept a contestant who had? He hesitates again. "Probably not. You can identify as a woman and say you're transitioning, but it changes once you start changing your body. It takes on a different thing; it changes the whole concept of what we're doing. We've had some girls who've had some injections in the face and maybe a little bit in the butt here and there, but they haven't transitioned."

There's something very touching about RuPaul's concern to stay abreast of subcultural developments and find a way to embrace even those he finds confronting. "There are certain words," for example, "that the kids would use, that I'd be like, 'Wait a minute, hold up now.' But I've had to accept it because I understand where it comes from." Such as? "Well, one of the things that the kids do now is they'll say, referring to another drag queen, 'Oh that bitch is cunt, she is pure cunt', which means she is serving realness," by which he means presenting herself as realistic or honest. "They say it knowing it's shocking, knowing it's taboo, and it's the same way that black people use the N-word."

RuPaul talks about "the kids" on his show in tenderly nurturing tones, but has never had children himself. He met his husband, Georges LeBar, an Australian rancher, on a New York dancefloor in 1994, and revealed last year that the pair had married, but explains quickly, "Conventional, that wasn't my goal! Our goal was to use the system to work for us. I don't give a fuck about marriage. What I did care about is that if anything happens to me or him, our assets are protected."

The couple's domestic arrangements are fairly unconventional; LeBar lives on the couple's 60,000-acre Wyoming ranch, while RuPaul spends most of his time in LA, observing an almost comically west coast lifestyle; he rises at 4am, meditates and does yoga, and is out in the canyon with his personal trainer before dawn. RuPaul puts the success of their 24-year relationship down to the fact that it is open.

"He and I are very respectful of one another. He and I know that on this planet where there are millions and millions of people, the person I have found on this planet that I like the very most is him. And I know that for him the person he loves the most on this planet is me. I know that; there's no doubt in my mind. So if he needs to do something else somewhere else, I'm fine with that. He is respectful of me. He would never turn it into something that would make me feel uncomfortable, and I wouldn't do that to him either. To have that on this planet is crazy. It's rare." He becomes overcome by tears again and sobs softly, before brightening and admitting, with a mischievous grin, "The truth of the matter is that there aren't many people that I like. I'm usually bored by people, you know. I'd rather be alone reading a book or something."

I ask if the couple ever considered having children. "Georges loves kids, but I know what a child needs to prosper and grow, and I don't have the time to do that. If I were going to do it, I would devote my time to that kid. But, no, I've never wanted to do it. I love kids, but it's mainly because I'd have to deal with the other parents." He chuckles. "Fucking idiots, passing on this bullshit to their kids. People are fucking insane, and it would be terrible for my kid, because I would be telling off the other parents. I'd want to expand my kid's experience, but all these other parents would be like..." He wags a finger disapprovingly. "Oh my God that would drive me crazy - so, no."

He pauses to think for a moment. "But who knows? It could still happen, sure. It could happen tomorrow, you know. If he wanted to do it tomorrow, I would do it." Really? "I certainly would, yes. It's because I've done my thing on this. I think my legacy is set in stone."

It can be hard sometimes to know when RuPaul is and isn't being serious. What he calls shapeshifting is so central to his sensibility that being fabulous feels more important than maintaining fixed positions - but that is precisely the political message of his show. In another life, had he not been in show business, he thinks he would have been a teacher, "teaching young people how to navigate life". But it is quite impossible to imagine him being anything other than RuPaul.

He wishes he'd given himself another stage name, and thus the option of anonymity in the doctor's waiting room, say. But when I ask what name he would have chosen for himself, he can't imagine being anyone but RuPaul either.

"You know, that's a good question. I'm really good at choosing names for other people. Once I get their energy and once I see the rhythm I go, 'Oh I know what you are.'" Can he do that trick for everyone? "I think so, once I know them." Go on then, I laugh. Give me a drag name. He considers me for a moment.

"You know what? The first thing that came to my mind with you is Sparkle." And so Sparkle it is.

RuPaul's Drag Race season 10 starts on 22 March on VH1. Previous seasons can be viewed on Netflix.

Commenting on this piece? If you would like your comment to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine's letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
RuPaul: 'Drag is a big f-you to male-dominated culture'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A mix of high camp and compassion has made RuPaul's Drag Race a TV hit. But beneath the wigs and corsets, the lip-syncing showgirls have a radical message

# data[].attributes.body
Young, generally white men, rich, have everything and everything. Top of the pay scale, the ideal perception of Privilege in the 1980's

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What rich 1980s white collar workers were called in the decade when the western world revelled in unapologetic materialism.

Yuppies (an acronym for "Young Urban Professionals") ostentatiously stocked their New York-style apartments with the most expensive designer appliances and the latest in high-end stereo and video gear, and drove to work in shiny new Benzes and Beemers.

Their clothing was designer clothing, their furniture was designer furniture . . . even their coffee was designer coffee!

In the USA and Britain the Reagan and Thatcher governments' barely concealed contempt for the poor gave tacit approval to those who viewed abundance as their inalienable right, and movies like Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987) served as an anthem and a call to arms for the nouveau rich "upwardly-mobile".

Nearly 75% of yuppie households were childless couples (Yuppies often worked so hard that they had little time for sex and more than one couple admitted that they had an answering machine at home just so they could talk to each other at least once a day!).

Unsurprisingly, a new yuppie sub-set emerged called DINKs ("Double Income - No Kids").

Married or not, DINK couples worked long hours at professional/managerial jobs, postponed having children for the sake of their careers. These couples had lots of disposable income which they used in consuming conspicuously.

The work of talented young writers like Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis and Jill Eisenstadt created a yuppie literary explosion, McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City was a huge success in 1984 and became a hit movie in 1988 starring Michael J. Fox, Phoebe Cates and Kiefer Sutherland.

With witty and fast-paced writing, McInerney subtly portrayed the downside of frenetic yuppie existence through a protagonist who resorts to "Bolivian marching powder" (cocaine) to help him keep up with a life in the fast lane.

Bret Easton Ellis explored the foibles of the "New Lost Generation" in his bestseller, Less Than Zero (1985), while Eisenstadt scored big with From Rockaway in 1987. But not everyone was enamoured of the yuppies, and "Die Yuppie Scum" bumper stickers were not an uncommon sight.

According to Newsweek, 1984 was the "Year of the Yuppie". Yuppies were lambasted as excessively consumptive in their pursuit of "the dream" without any real regard for those left behind.

But the yuppie heyday was to be short-lived - critics gleefully described the stock market crash of October 1987 as the consequence of yuppie folly and the beginning of the yuppie's end.

"Yuppie" quickly became a derogatory term and as the decade came to a close, the term became synonymous with greed, self-absorption and a lack of social conscience - and no one would admit to being one.

A popular joke at the time celebrated that, unlike pigeons, yuppies could no longer make a deposit on a Porsche . . .

But in hindsight yuppies weren't all bad. Yuppies led the way in gentrifying urban neighbourhoods, turning warehouse lofts and run-down brownstones into valuable real estate, and there can be little doubt that the yuppie phenomenon had a lasting cultural impact.

As Hendrik Hertzberg, editor of New Republic wrote, "The fact is that . . . yuppies have better taste than yesterday's well-off young adult Americans, are less ostentatious in their display of wealth, . . . set a far better example of healthful living, and are more tolerant."

TRIVIA NOTE
The Young Urban Professional lady engrossed in a snog at the top right of the picture (right) is none other than future posh totty cookery queen Nigella Lawson.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What rich 1980s white collar workers were called in the decade when the western world revelled in unapologetic materialism. Yuppies (an acronym for "Young Urban Professionals") ostentatiously stocked their New York-style apartments with the most expensive designer appliances and the latest in high-end stereo and video gear, and drove to work in shiny new Benzes and Beemers.

# data[].attributes.headline
Perfect Complexion, but not for all shades

# data[].attributes.subject
Perfect Complexion, but not for all shades

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Three years ago, I made a trip to Sephora with one specific purpose in mind: to search for the perfect foundation. Surely, some mystical brown shade existed at the elusive nexus of "good" and "right." Having spent most of my life wearing solely mascara and a resting bitch face, this was my first time hunting for just one decent cream or powder amid the cascading options available for skin tones ranging from white to very white to kinda brown.

Overwhelmed, I studied the stacks of Lancôme and Yves Saint Laurent compacts in Sephora's Flatiron location and recalled, in my head, the dozens of semi-empty foundation bottles my mom used to have scattered atop her dresser. But here's where my story takes a detour from the déjà vu feeling of helplessness that's become a staple in beauty trend pieces.

To avoid certain disappointment, I brought along a friend with a similar dark complexion as mine who also happens to be a beauty blogger. Alone in that makeup funhouse, I would've imploded for sure. My friend walked up to the Make Up Forever section, plucked two High Definition bottles of foundation, tested the back of my hand, and applied the best match to my face. Never mind that I ended up ditching the idea of foundation within two weeks; I found the right shade in minutes, but only with the help of a person who looked like me. That friend works for L'Oreal Paris now.

The problem I and many other women of color face on a regular basis is surviving that experience again and again, in an industry where makeup is predominantly default white. This is not a new dilemma at all, as much as it is a constant cycle of exclusion and expected inefficacy with occasional outliers. Not nearly enough experts exist who, like my brilliant friend, have makeup foundation down to a science or, like me, have enough anecdotal evidence and personal horror stories to recognize the specific needs of black and brown women.

Over the years, there've been articles either highlighting the beauty industry's exclusion or pronouncing the dawn of a new era-an illusion of variety galore in beauty aisles. These stories exist in the form of essays about The Search for products or predictions of a positive shift that, in real time, tends to arrive at a dead end. These stories pop up every so often without fail, creating a dominant narrative of the past few years that the beauty industry fails us.

In 2006, Village Voice wondered, "Has the cosmetics industry really come to recognize women of color as a target audience?" In 2014, the New York Times published "Makeup That Addresses the Many Shades of Women"-a piece about the industry's stunted growth-while a Los Angeles Times piece declared: "New lines for women of color broaden the spectrum of beauty." 2015 saw similar reported cycles of struggle and progress: Racked's "Is the Makeup Industry Finally Embracing Diversity?" highlighted beauty's small leaps, as did NPR's roundtable "Cosmetics Companies Play Catch-Up With Diversity Of Customer" and Bloomberg's "The World's Biggest Cosmetics Brands Are Finally Courting Minorities." Cosmopolitan.com published "Why Are Women of Color Still Having Trouble Finding Foundation?" in which Andrea Arterberry wrote about her disappointing beauty trials: "While there were dozens of shades, not one suited my olive undertones. I knew from years of trial and error that, once applied, those pale shades would give me that 'trashy ashy' look."

This year again, in February, Refinery29 published "How The Beauty Industry Has Failed Black Women," in which Taylor Bryant wrote: "Brands are also increasingly marketing to Black women. But it's not enough to slap Lupita or Kerry or Zendaya's face on your ad and call it a day - you have to also deliver with the product."

Any broad sense of optimism seems to continually be met with frustration. The immediate psychological response to the deficiency is a desire to seek solace in minority-owned brands that cater to us, and to cast away those that neglect us. (It's all the more tempting now, with people like Solange pledging support of black-owned businesses as a means of protest.) Still, it's hard to ignore the legitimate need for comparable mainstream (and affordable) makeup options that make consumer life a little easier. The status quo seems to shift only to an extent, but lately the largest makeup companies have attempted broader selections, celebrity collaborations and more targeted marketing.

In 2014, L'Oreal bought the black-owned business Carol's Daughter. In 2015, Lupita Nyong'o was named beauty ambassador for Lancôme, and CoverGirl launched a line with the stars of Empire in March. Queen Latifah has her CoverGirl Queen collection. Rihanna has M.A.C. (which also launched a Future Forward line this year featuring Tinashe, Dej Loaf and Lion Babe). Angela Bassett is creating a makeup line with Dr. Barbara Sturm. And at BeautyCon on July 9, Kelly Rowland promoted Face, a makeup collection for darker skin tones that she's creating with her makeup artist Sheika Daley. Rowland told Essence, "We're starting off with lashes and then we're going to have it grow for all women. But definitely making sure we have our chocolate girls covered. Gotta get the chocolate girls in there!"

In doing this story, my goal was to find reasons for the lack of diverse shades and tones in the beauty industry-whether scientific or experiential-that might explain the issue beyond the crutch of pure ignorance. (To clarify, I'm focusing specifically on black and brown skin of various ethnicities, and on makeup, particularly foundations and concealers since they're meant to blend with our natural skin tones, but also lipsticks and blushes that need to address darker pigments.) I was also curious how beauty bloggers have positively served the industry, under the presumption that social media-the most direct consumer feedback-has clearly made the establishment more accountable. I found that while the imbalance appears to be shrinking toward progress, personal experience tends to trump market trends and, as always, the internet is the ultimate equalizer.

It's not as simple as creating more shades. There's an issue of ignorance and the issue of marketing. The problem most of these trend stories hit on is the vexing intersection of market behavior and life experience that's difficult to navigate. In other words, the idea that there may be more shades available but there isn't one "for me." In 2013, the personal finance service Mint estimated that women spend $15,000 on makeup in a lifetime; a 2009 report found that the annual figure black women spent on beauty products was $7.5 billion. Even as beauty companies offer more, the aisles seem to remain drastically not in our favor.

The paper trail of misery for black women in the beauty market is long and running. By the 1940s, makeup lines for black women were more prevalent, but beauty companies still focused many of their advertising efforts on appealing to black women through the use of skin lightening products slyly promoted as blemish creams.

In the book Style and Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975, author Susannah Walker writes: "As in the 1920s and 1930s, bleaching cream advertisements mixed blatant claims for the skin-lightening properties of the product with assertions that the cream was really for overall improvement of skin tone and texture." The marketing in the '50s had become savvier and less about portraying dark skin as "ugly and desirable," Walker notes.

But this emphasizes an important point that American black beauty and consumerism has inextricably been tied to the social and political climate of the moment, and to power dynamics. If, as Walker writes, advertisers at the time "did not see black people as affluent enough to warrant special advertising attention or sophisticated enough to respond to product marketing," then it explains why products for black women weren't a consideration to begin with and why niche black companies thrived.

The book also cites black publications as an essential source for makeup advice-nightclub singer Norma Shephard told Our World magazine in 1946, "I don't have to tell you what a job it is to have to match face powder to Negro complexion tones"; the mag also wrote that "suitable shades are about to be packaged and placed on the market." Even as progress was seemingly being made, the industry continued to report setbacks.

The November 1975 issue of Black Enterprise has an article titled "The Beauty Business Is Still Bullish." The piece mentions Revlon's then new line of foundation, lipstick and blush for black women called The Polished Ambers. It notes Clairol's launch of "two shades of makeup tailored to darker skin tones" (wow, two). It also references the black beauty market boom of the 1960s (post-riots), citing white-owned beauty businesses that made products for black skin, like Posner's and Flori Roberts, which launched to compete alongside the black-owned and dominant Johnson Products, Fashion Fair and the like, alongside celebrity lines like jazz singer Nancy Wilson's Cosmetics for Beautiful Ladies of Colour, created in 1971.

"If you're a cosmetics company that's coming to market and you have the old school six to eight shades of foundations, then you're behind the times."

Years later, in its August 1978 issue, Black Enterprise wrote about the dilemma of mainstream beauty companies beginning to pursue black women's pockets. To probably no one's surprise, it was the power of the black dollar that brought diversity to the beauty industry, not a push for inclusion. The unfortunate side effect of companies widening their selections for the sake of profits was that it threatened the livelihoods of black-owned businesses, much to the frustration of entrepreneurs like Johnson Products founder George Johnson. Adamant against white capital interest in the black beauty market, he said in a speech to beauticians, according to Black Enterprise:

"White people, for the most part, ignored this industry as long as they thought it was a nickel and dime business. We were overlooked or else looked upon as just 'nigger business.' It was too little for them to be involved with or concerned about. Today, they are making strong efforts to take over entry level of the kinky-hair business. They want the manufacturing business. They want the beauty shop operations. And they want the beauty jobber business."

The Black Enterprise article concluded that "the future of the black beauty market seems to be getting brighter," which sounds exactly like the above-mentioned articles from the past three years.

Decades later, the future was in fact brighter-or rather, darker. In 1990, Maybelline-then America's second most profitable cosmetics brand behind CoverGirl-started Shades of You, a makeup line for black women. "In the '90s, different general market brands said, 'let's create some brand that works for the multicultural audience,'" Karen Chambers, Iman Cosmetics' director of product development, told me. "I don't know what happened after those early attempts. I don't know if they didn't quite get the mix right or didn't quite get the audience loyalty that they were hoping for, but most of those brands went away." (Shades of You appears to have been discontinued in the mid-to-late '90s).

In a Black Enterprise article from June 1991 about Maybelline, beauty expert Alfred Fornay told the magazine, "The makeup market for women of color hasn't met its potential compared to the white market." Fortune reported in 1994:

When in 1990 Maybelline Inc. launched Shades of You, a mass-market cosmetics line for women of darker hues, no minorities worked in marketing at the company or in middle or upper management. When Maybelline's parent, Wasserstein Perella, became aware of the situation, a few people of color were hired. Shades of You is a winner, with about 35% of the $100-million-a-year ethnic cosmetics market, and CEO Robert Hiatt asserts, "It is not the makeup of our management that is important; it is paying attention to the market and customers. We don't keep track of the number of minorities or other groups in the company."

Hiatt's tone-deaf response ignored the issue that a majority-white beauty team is exactly what contributes to the problem. You can see how that thinking trickled down. In his book Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century, Robert E. Weems describes Shades of You as a "watershed moment for African American female consumers." He writes:

This represented the first time a major cosmetic company had created a mass-market line for African American women. Still, Maybelline's historic maneuver appeared to have been primarily motivated by a desire for profit, rather than by a strong commitment to serving the needs of black female consumers.

Maybelline and others made money in the black market-Estee Lauder had a similarly targeted line, Prescriptives All Skins, which, Weems writes, "attracted nearly fifty thousand new black customers during its first year." In 1990, the line offered a broader range of foundation options-115 shades, according to its site. M.A.C. (founded in 1984) and Bobbi Brown Cosmetics (which launched in 1991 as Bobbi Brown Essentials) are two names I've seen consistently praised for their wide range of products for different skin tones, primarily because they were founded by makeup artists familiar with diverse tones.

What changed from between the '90s and now is easy to figure out. Because so much of beauty is based on personal experience, beauty blogging has become crucial. When I spoke to Patrice Yursik, founder of Afrobella, a beauty site for women of color, she recalled how few diverse products were available in 2006 when she started her site.

"There were not a lot of mainstream beauty products offering more than, let's say, eight shades of foundations. It's been so beautiful to watch all of those things change," she says. "At this point, if you're a cosmetics company that's coming to market and you have the old school six to eight shades of foundations, then you're behind the times, you're not in step with the rest of your peers in the industry and you will feel that backlash online. Social media has allowed the consumer to be so directly outspoken in their opinions and their needs in a way that it really wasn't possible."

Now, of course, the consumer knows more about makeup than the brands who make them. Where before the average black beauty user might have gained most of their beauty insight from magazines like Essence or Ebony (mainstream pubs barely addressed women of color), it can't be overstated how much beauty blogs have democratized the business, allowing women of various shades a voice and a seat.

Even though bloggers have, in turn, become strange bedfellows with brands looking to exploit their popularity, the bloggers are still the people consumers trust way more than conglomerates. WWD wrote in February:

The sea change is creating a new generation of consumers, a swelling group of young women who devour beauty content, determinedly search for details about products they covet, itch to try new brands and crave great scores. Increasingly, brands are responding by unleashing newness at warp speed, solidifying relationships with social media stars, ambushing trends and quickening the pace of their marketing efforts. With social media inflaming desire for products, it's a kill-or-be-killed environment in the beauty business, and the kills can be immediate and very, very big.

"Old school department store brands are scrambling to try to figure out their footing," says Afrobella's Yursik. "You look at someone like Kylie Jenner and you see the success of the Lip Kit and you're like, wait a minute the whole beauty game has changed. You no longer have to wait for this partnership with this brand that will bless you and say that you are worthy. You can create something that has your own name on it."

It also presents a more visible landscape to submit feedback. Around 2008, L'Oreal was on the receiving end of criticism over ads where Beyoncé's skin appeared lightened. Last year, Clutch reported controversy over a Black Opal Cosmetics tweet that implied it wasn't a brand designed for black women, despite its origins.

(In an email to me, the company's VP of marketing, Maya Brown, referred to its global expansion and stated that their customers' skin "ranges from a very fair beige tone to a very deep coffee tone.")

In February, British consumers dragged Maybelline over its Dream Velvet foundation launch, which offered one shade for darker tones but used model Jourdan Dunn's face in an ad. BuzzFeed reported:

After BuzzFeed News contacted Maybelline UK about why only six shades were available to buy in the UK, a spokesperson said they had plans to release Jourdan's shade "in the next few months."

Again in June, BareMinerals unveiled a new line of concealers called Complexions Rescue, which featured 16 shades, with only two for darker skin tones. Criticism poured in online, a vast difference from years ago when consumers had to speak into a void. "Social media has done an awesome job of replacing what back in the day we would use as focus groups. We have live information from consumers," says Chambers, from Iman Cosmetics. "The consumers have been very vocal about brands who've put beautiful models and celebrities of colors in the advertising, but then the shades weren't right. There's a fabulous level of education out there. We have consumers writing in, like, 'Are you getting your palm oil from the Amazon?'"

In comparison, because of its diverse options, Colour Pop Cosmetics-which posts swatches for different skin tones as part of its product launches-became what people call an online sensation, based largely on word of mouth traffic. There's also Essence BeautyBox and Doobop.com, both beauty compilation services that target women of color.

"We've certainly seen more mainstream companies attempt to provide a wider range of shades, but there's a lot of room to grow," says Brandi Shipp, VP and general manager of Essence BeautyBox. "Many just check a box and have a couple of darker shades, but we know there are so many different skin tones and undertones in our community. You need more than just a few darker shades than usual."

"The beauty industry has faced major scientific challenges in formulating foundations for medium to deeper skin tones."

An obvious reason for the lack of options is that fewer or, worse, zero people of color work inside the makeup labs where makeup is produced. While collaborating with M.A.C. on a capsule collection in 2011, Yursik says she visited their lab and was surprised with its diverse staff.

"The people in front and even the senior management might be people who reflect the brand, but the people who are actually working right there in the lab are not the people who are the skin tone of the products," says Chambers. "So sometimes there are a lot of assumptions about what will work on certain skin tones. And it just doesn't. There has to be nuances that really work."

At the same time that beauty bloggers have become central influencers-to the point of creating their own collections for brands-celebrities are aligning with brands in more substantial ways. The use of famous spokesmodels for beauty ads heightened around the '20s and '30s, when, as the book Style and Status details, "in African American beauty product advertising, the use of beautiful and sexy showgirls and blues singers was part of the larger transition from advertisements that promoted good grooming and stressed the functionality of products to those that emphasized romance and sexual attractiveness."

Lately, in place of positions as spokesmodels, as Beyoncé and Frieda Pinto do for L'Oreal Paris, celebs are promoted as ambassadors. As Neutrogena's beauty ambassador and creative consultant, Kerry Washington helped introduce shades for women with darker skin tones. It's significant that Neutrogena, as of three years ago, did not have a foundation that matched Kerry Washington's shade.

This about face is part of a long tradition of brands transforming their screw-ups into positive marketing campaigns. By blatantly advertising their diversity rather than simply doing it-with the help of popular darker skinned women in the forefront-they're hoping consumers will forgive the brand's past transgressions. "Why would Lancôme choose Lupita to be their spokesperson? That's a very specific statement and an intentional statement," says Yursik. "It's 'we really want you to know that we're doing this.'"

Chambers adds, "The celebrity factor has gotten big, so brands have said let's include celebrities as part of the brand's story. What's failed the consumer is that a lot of times the product offerings did not translate."

Essentially, A-list stars promote a product in ads but consumers looking to buy those items in person have unsatisfactory results. "You're not done once you've got a great product selection. That's the have to have," says Shipp. "It's important to have more than one brown face in an ad. You need to represent the full range of shades and skin tones and beauty processes and needs and that's not done through a single spokesperson."

Lancôme had to go so far as to create a whole new shade for Lupita Nyong'o last year, which it did under its Women of Color Lab, launched in 2013. In a rare feat, the lab is managed by a black woman, chemist Balanda Atis, who says it's a challenge for many brands to just figure out the science.

"The beauty industry has faced major scientific challenges in formulating foundations for medium to deeper skin tones," Atis wrote in an email. "The more traditional colorants used to deepen shades are limited and chemists don't always have an optimized formula architecture to allow the skin's natural tones to show through. In some cases, the formula will hide the skin's natural color instead of enhancing it. The second challenge is that they may not have the right balance of pigments in the formula-for example, too much red or yellow-to achieve the best shade."

Black Opal's Maya Brown also thinks there's a gap in education among mainstream brands about the chemistry of darker skin tones. "Many general market brands have expanded their shade palettes with offerings that are deeper than 'caramel,' which historically was the darkest shade in the line," Brown wrote in an email. "There are still opportunities to vary the mix with richer and deeper tones that cater to the blends of colors within multi-hued skin. You can't just add brown pigment to a tan shade and think you're creating a deeper tone. Multi-hued skin is more nuanced and requires an appropriate mix of colors that complement our vast shade spectrum."

In a tangible, real-world example, a black Gawker Media colleague told me she had problems finding the right shade of Urban Decay's Naked foundation. When she went shopping for it in January, nothing fit what she needed-a color between 9 and 10. She only recently discovered that the company launched six new shades in March (she has yet to shop for one) to bring its total offering to 24 shades, which they claim were "meticulously calibrated."

Simple logic and expert opinions suggests the reason black women spend so much on beauty products is consummate trial and error, as WWD noted in a 2009 piece about purchasing power. Such a high cost puts black consumers at an immediate disadvantage, especially when new products are introduced that don't account for our many shades.The latest industry-wide push is toward Korean products (the marketing of skin lighteners presents a different set of issues for Asian American women), with an emphasis on BB creams, the all-in-one "beauty balm" designed to multitask as a moisturizer, foundation and concealer.

Chambers says Iman started offering the product two years ago because "there were no brown BB creams," she says. "The trend had come out of Asia and our girls were into it and there was nothing beyond that slightly medium color. Everything was heavy and chalky."

In terms of retail, Yursek points to the significance of seeing affordable drug stores brands-she cites Milani, Jordana and NYX Cosmetics-expand their options. "There've been so many brands that came and realized, oh is that what you want as a consumer? Then we're gonna give it to you," she says. "When those came out, people were so excited just to have an eye shadow with pigment that could work for a deeper skin tone in a drugstore at a reasonably afforded price. Now, I really think it's driven so much by the needs of the consumer and through social media in a way that is subversive to the beauty industry."

Tragic beauty stories never seem to find a resolution because the answer is obvious: the makeup business needs more women of color chemists, marketers, spokesmodels and ambassadors across the board. The industry has finally-incredibly late- just started to move toward a tipping point. And it's the consumers who've largely initiated the shift by being better equipped to vocalize their demands.

"I think the decision-makers who are higher up in these old school brands have not evolved. They stay in a bubble. The bubble might be in San Francisco or New York, where you think people who've been your consumer for a long time are the only people you need to speak to," says Yursik. "Eventually, you will be told that you need to expand."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Makeup Industry's Frustrating Cycle of Struggle and Progress for Women of Color

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Three years ago, I made a trip to Sephora with one specific purpose in mind: to search for the perfect foundation. Surely, some mystical brown shade existed at the elusive nexus of "good" and "right."

# data[].attributes.body
#Annoying

# data[].attributes.body
horizontal hostility page 87

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Monica Lewinsky has been talking about it. The actress Ashley Judd has railed against it. The TV shows " Scandal," ""Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce" and MTV's "True Life" have addressed it. Little League pitcher Mo'ne Davis refuses to be intimidated by it.

Slut-shaming. No doubt you've heard this word, but you may be confused about its meaning. You also may be wondering why it has proliferated.

Slut-shaming is the experience of being labeled a sexually out-of-control girl or woman (a "slut" or "ho") and then being punished socially for possessing this identity. Slut-shaming is sexist because only girls and women are called to task for their sexuality, whether real or imagined; boys and men are congratulated for the exact same behavior. This is the essence of the sexual double standard: Boys will be boys, and girls will be sluts.

I have been tracking slut-shaming for two decades. Repeatedly, girls and young women across North America tell me that they are encouraged, even expected, to present themselves as sexually knowing and sophisticated, both online and offline. Being "hot" or sexy is part of the recipe of heterosexual femininity. But with one false step, it's easy to cross the invisible and ever-shifting boundary between "sexy" and "slutty." If she is perceived as "too" sexy; if she calls too much attention to her sexiness; if she lacks the sprezzatura that is compulsory to pull off the sexy-but-not-slutty performance; she faces a real risk of becoming labeled.

In other words, if you are a heterosexual girl or young woman, you are damned if you don't and damned if you do. If you refrain from any expression of sexiness, you may be written off as irrelevant and unfeminine. But if you follow the guidelines, you run the risk of being judged, shamed and policed.

Slut-shaming is certainly not new. Monica Lewinsky was called "a little tart" in a Wall Street Journal editorial in 1998. White radio show host Don Imus referred to the black members of the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos" in 2007. Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" after she advocated for no-copay birth control in 2012.

What is new is that slut-shaming has become normalized and omnipresent. I have yet to meet an American woman under the age of 25 who has not been called a "slut" or a "ho" at some point in her life. Acts of slut-shaming are easier than ever to accomplish in the age of social media. Young men can anonymously take photographs of naked, unconscious women with their phones and post the pictures on Facebook without the women's consent -- as the members of the Penn State fraternity Kappa Delta Rho recently did. A university student can blithely and publicly call a 13-year-old girl a "slut," as has happened to the rising talent in baseball, Mo'ne Davis.

Slut-shaming is far more harmful than simple name-calling -- although being denigrated publicly in itself can be traumatic, as the suicides of a number of slut-shamed girls attests. Once a girl or woman is regarded as a "slut" or "ho," she becomes a target for sexual assault. And if she is sexually assaulted, she may be assigned the "slut" or "ho" identity ex post facto to rationalize the crime and to protect the assaulter. The girl who was raped at a party in Steubenville, Ohio in 2013 was vilified by strangers and peers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube; they could make sense of the horrible crime only by assigning the "drunken slut" label to the victim.

You might think: Given this set of circumstances, isn't it preferable for a girl or woman to abstain from sexual expression? Putting aside the sexism of this point of view, since boys and men never have to face this decision, it actually makes no difference if a girl or woman is sexually active or even utters any expression of sexuality: she can be called to task simply because she is female. Ashley Judd recently tweeted an innocuous comment during a basketball championship game (she wrote, "I think Arkansas is playing dirty") and was harassed online as a result. People sexualized, objectified and threatened her with sexual violence -- because she expressed an opinion. Clearly, sluttiness to some people indicates a woman who asserts herself, sexually or not.

Yet embracing the "slut" identity is also not necessarily a panacea. A number of teenage girls and young women I've spoken with have referred to themselves as "sluts" to indicate they were comfortable with their sexuality -- trying to wrest control over the term for themselves -- but this strategy backfired. Several were sexually assaulted, and women of color face even greater risks because many white people are influenced by the racist belief that women of color are inherently sexually wild and therefore deserve to be shamed.

As we've seen, slut-shaming is not really about women's sexuality. It is grounded in the belief that men get to assert themselves, and women do not. It may be getting a lot of attention these days, but slut-shaming is really just a catchy way to signify old-fashioned sexism.

Like Us On Facebook |
Follow Us On Twitter |
Contact HuffPost Women

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Monica Lewinsky has been talking about it. The actress Ashley Judd has railed against it. The TV shows " Scandal," ""Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce" and MTV's "True Life" have addressed it. Little League pitcher Mo'ne Davis refuses to be intimidated by it. Slut-shaming. No doubt you've heard this word, but you may be confused about its meaning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Free The Nipple is a global campaign of change, focused on the Equality, Empowerment, and Freedom of all human beings. Free The Nipple has become a premiere voice for gender equality, utilizing all forms of modern media, to raise awareness and effect change on various social issues, and injustices.

# data[].attributes.body
bootstrap myth, example in book, but this scene goes beyond that page 82

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Vivian was sexually harassed! Leave it to Edward

# data[].attributes.body
Micro level experience to Macro level movement in the 1960's

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Freedom Summer | Article

Fannie Lou Hamer

From the Collection: Women in American History

Fannie Lou Hamer was born in 1917, the 20th child of Lou Ella and James Lee Townsend, sharecroppers east of the Mississippi Delta. She first joined her family in the cotton fields at the age of six. Although she managed to complete several years of school, by adolescence she was picking hundreds of pounds of cotton a day. In the early 1940s she married Perry Hamer, known as Pap, and worked alongside him at W.D. Marlow's plantation near Ruleville, in Sunflower County. Hamer's ability to read and write earned her the job of timekeeper, a less physically demanding and more prestigious job within the sharecropping system.

The Hamers adopted two daughters, girls whose own families were unable to care for them. (They later adopted their two grandchildren after the older daughter's death.) Hamer's own pregnancies had all failed, and she was sterilized without her knowledge or consent in 1961. She was given a hysterectomy while in the hospital for minor surgery, a procedure so common it was known as a "Mississippi appendectomy." "[In] the North Sunflower County Hospital, I would say about six out of the 10 Negro women that go to the hospital are sterilized with the tubes tied," she told a Washington, DC, audience three years later.

The forced sterilization was one of the moments that set Hamer on the path to the forefront of the Mississippi Civil Rights movement, but the incident that brought her into a leadership role came a year later. On August 31, 1962, not long after attending a voting rights meeting organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Hamer joined 17 of her neighbors on a bus to Indianola, the county seat. Officials blocked most of the group from even attempting to register; Hamer and one man were the only ones allowed to fill out the application and take the literacy test, which both failed.

On the drive back to Ruleville, the bus was stopped and the driver arrested -- the bus was too yellow, the police claimed. While the passengers were held on the bus, the deeply religious Hamer began to sing spirituals. Singing, in particular, "This Little Light of Mine" and "Go Tell It on the Mountain," became one of the defining features of her activism.

When the passengers scraped together enough money to cover the driver's fine, the bus was allowed to return to Ruleville. When Hamer got home, she found that plantation owner W.D.

Marlow was already aware that she had tried to register to vote. He demanded that she withdraw her application. She refused, with an explanation that would become a familiar refrain in her Civil Rights speeches: "I didn't go down there to register for you. I went down to register for myself." Marlow ordered her off his land.

Hamer stayed with friends in Ruleville for a few days, but it was clear that there would be reprisals against the people who had gone to Indianola. Pap drove Hamer and their daughters to Tallahatchie County, where they stayed with rural relatives for some time before returning to Sunflower County, ready to take up the fight.

Her singing on the bus and her willingness to challenge the county registrar had been noticed by local organizers, and SNCC field secretary Bob Moses saw her as a potential leader. He sent Charles McLaurin, a young activist, to find Hamer and bring her to a SNCC conference at Fisk University in Nashville in the fall of 1962. The conference was a success, and Hamer left Nashville eager to take on her new role as a community organizer.

Pap Hamer had stayed at the Marlow plantation, working through the harvest to pay off the family's sharecropping debt, but in the fall of 1962 he rejoined his wife and daughters. Marlow took possession of the Hamers' car, as well as the contents of the house they had rented from him, so they started over in Ruleville. The family's main source of income was Hamer's $10 weekly stipend from SNCC.

Through 1962 and 1963, Hamer continued to work for desegregation and voter registration. She would also become involved in relief work, distributing donated food and clothes to the poorest Delta residents. Hamer had spent her entire life in poverty, and she understood that the fight for economic security was a crucial component of the Civil Rights movement. At the same time, she was willing to use the donations as leverage, and sometimes refused to hand over food until the recipients agreed to register to vote.

On June 9, 1963, Hamer and several fellow activists were returning from a citizenship training program in Charleston, South Carolina, when their bus stopped in Winona, Mississippi. In an act of protest, several members of the group sat at the bus station's whites-only lunch counter. Before long the police removed them from the café, arresting six people.

In jail, several of the activists were beaten by the police and by other African American inmates, whom the police forced to use blackjack weapons. The damage done to Hamer's eyes, legs, and kidneys would affect her for the rest of her life.

When the activists did not check in with the SNCC office that afternoon, organizers knew they were in trouble. It took several days -- and the arrest and beating of Lawrence Guyot, another SNCC worker -- before they were finally released on June 12. After they left the jail, Hamer and her colleagues learned that Medgar Evers had been assassinated on the front steps of his Jackson, MS home the previous day. As the NAACP field secretary, Evers had been the driving force behind the admission of the first black student to the University of Mississippi.

In the following months, Hamer increased her public profile, both through her SNCC work and as one of the founders of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which challenged the dominant force in Mississippi politics, the pro-segregation Democratic Party. In early 1964, Hamer ran for Congress as the MFDP candidate. She challenged veteran Congressman Jamie Whitten in the Democratic primary. Though Whitten won with an overwhelming majority, Hamer's run set a precedent by challenging the established Mississippi congressional delegation, and set the stage for the MFDP to have a national presence.

The work of MFDP was one part of the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project, or Freedom Summer, which brought hundreds of college students to the state to work for Civil Rights. Although some SNCC organizers were wary of bringing in a group of outsiders, mostly whites from the North, Hamer saw value in an integrated movement and convinced many to abandon their objections. "If we're trying to break down this barrier of segregation, we can't segregate ourselves," she said in a SNCC meeting.

Hamer traveled to Oxford, Ohio, to train the volunteers who would be teaching classes and registering voters -- and to sing the spirituals and movement songs she was known for. Tracy Sugarman, who spent the summer in Mississippi as both a volunteer and a journalist, accompanied Hamer as she visited Delta churches to encourage parishioners to register to vote. "Mrs. Hamer rose majestically to her feet," he wrote. "Her magnificent voice rolled through the chapel as she enlisted the Biblical ranks of martyrs and heroes to summon these folk to the Freedom banner. Her mounting, rolling battery of quotations and allusions from the Old and New Testaments stunned the audience with its thunder."

While the student volunteers knocked on doors and taught classes, Hamer was busy with the MFDP. The party held its own conventions at the precinct, county, and state levels to select a group to send to Atlantic City in August, where they would challenge the seating of the all-white Mississippi delegates at the Democratic National Convention. Hamer was elected vice chair of the integrated delegation, which consisted of 64 black members and four white members.

The MFDP's goal was to persuade the convention's Credentials Committee to seat them as Mississippi representatives. President Lyndon Johnson, who needed Southern Democrats' support in his bid for re-election, was determined to block them. Hamer was among those who testified before the Credentials Committee. During her powerful testimony, Johnson called a last-minute press conference, causing the networks to break with their convention coverage and broadcast from the White House instead.

But Johnson's ploy to keep Hamer off television did not work. Her testimony was compelling enough for many evening news programs to broadcast it, incidentally granting it a much larger audience. Hamer held the committee's attention as she spoke from memory about her eviction from the Marlow plantation and her brutal beating in the Winona jail. After less than 10 minutes she concluded: "If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?"

Nonetheless, under pressure from Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, members of the Credentials Committee dropped their support for the MFDP. As a conciliatory gesture, Democratic officials offered two at-large seats to MFDP representatives, though Humphrey made it clear Johnson would not stand for one of the seats going to Hamer, "The President has said he will not let that illiterate woman speak on the floor of the Democratic convention." The MFDP rejected the offer, and Hamer's voice was one of the loudest in opposition. "We didn't come all this way for no two seats," she said.

After the MFDP delegation returned to Mississippi, Hamer was in high demand as a speaker. Her appearances were good for fundraising, always a concern for civil rights organizations, and she spent the remainder of the 1960s balancing national activism with her work within Mississippi. Voting rights remained a priority, even after the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, and Hamer took the lead in lawsuits that led to the first elections in which large numbers of black residents of Sunflower County were registered and eligible to vote in 1967. She also organized plaintiffs for a school desegregation lawsuit, instituted livestock and agricultural co-ops to improve economic prospects in the Delta, and was involved in the introduction of Head Start programs for low-income children of all races. Hamer had mixed success, particularly as her worsening health -- a combination of a lifetime in poverty, her 1963 beating, and a 1976 cancer diagnosis -- limited her capacity for public speaking and made fundraising difficult.

Hamer died in 1977 from complications associated with heart disease and cancer. Hundreds of local residents turned out for her funeral, as did most of the leaders of the civil rights movement. Stokely Carmichael of SNCC, Ella Baker of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women, and Delta Democrat-Times editor Hodding Carter all spoke in celebration of Hamer's contributions to her family, her community, and the fight for Civil Rights that was her driving passion.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fannie Lou Hamer | American Experience | PBS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fannie Lou Hamer was born in 1917, the 20th child of Lou Ella and James Lee Townsend, sharecroppers east of the Mississippi Delta.

# data[].attributes.body
How the stereotypes of beauty reinforced into children affects how they view others and themselves, and how they relate in regards to beauty

# data[].attributes.body
Page 127 about languages and symbols

# data[].attributes.body
Looking through all the dolls available, a lot has changed from the 1990's and even before that, theres a difference in bodies, race, and jobs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Barbie Dolls: Buy Barbie Toys & Gift Sets Online : Barbie

# data[].attributes.body
Case study in Book: Page 138: Relevant topic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
nyt: us threatened nations over breastfeeding resolution - cnnpolitics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
NYT: US threatened nations over breastfeeding resolution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The United States threatened nations in an effort to blunt a World Health Assembly resolution supporting breastfeeding this spring, The New York Times reported Sunday.

# data[].attributes.headline
What some people would consider man-hating

# data[].attributes.subject
What some people would consider man-hating

# data[].attributes.body
No tampon taxation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
ChapStick, Viagra and dandruff shampoo. These are just three of the thousands of health and personal care items that are exempt from sales tax in many U.S. states.Notably missing from that list: menstrual products.

So far, nine states have exempted menstrual products from their sales tax, and seven have introduced legislation aimed at doing the same. Three of the seven - Nebraska, Virginia and Arizona - introduced their legislation this year.

In her recently published book, Periods Gone Public, Jennifer Weiss-Wolf chronicles what she calls a lack of "period equity." Managing menstruation "is a critical aspect of the lives and civic participation of more than half the population," and should be considered when making policy, she writes.

A large part of her advocacy has focused on fighting against what's known as the "tampon tax." It's just one example of women paying a premium for various products, a phenomenon known as the "pink tax."

While there is no specific tax on tampons, in states that don't tax medical and health supplies, tampons are excluded from those tax-exempt categories. Hence the term "tampon tax."

According to Weiss-Wolf, the tampon tax was a natural starting place for her advocacy. She began working on the issue of period equity at the beginning of 2015, and the following year she teamed up with Laura Strausfeld, a lawyer looking to combat the tampon tax. Together they formed the aptly named Period Equity, an organization that works on legal cases and legislation across the country meant to combat the tampon tax.

Period Equity's most recent undertaking was a public service ad starring celebrity Amber Rose, which was released on YouTube. Rose, clad in a provocative black dress, carefully strokes a diamond pendent and opens the charm to reveal a single tampon. "Where else would you keep something 36 states tax as a luxury?" the voice-over asks in an unabashed tone.

Minnesota, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut and Florida have all outlawed the tampon tax. Four of the states - New York, Illinois, Connecticut and Florida - have made this change just in the last two years. They are the early adopters of a policy change that seems to get more popular each day.

At least one company has taken on this issue head on. Boxed, an online bulk shopping company, introduced its #RethinkPink initiative, offering a discount on menstrual products to offset states sales taxes.

Of course, the company stands to gain customers from this initiative. If more women choose to shop with Boxed because of the discounts, they end up buying other goods on its website, making up for the initial loss in revenue.

Loading...

Nitasha Mehta is the head of vendor marketing for the company and lobbies around the country, including Nevada and Ohio, where she testified in support of anti-tampon-tax bills. "There is a trend starting to occur," she says.

In Ohio, state Rep. Brigid Kelly, a Democrat, recently earned a major win for the legislation in a Republican-dominated statehouse. Her bill, which would exempt feminine hygiene products from the state sales tax,was introduced in February 2017 and was given a second hearing last fall.

"We were so happy," she says. "This is a very simple practical thing that we can do in order to make necessary medical products more accessible to women in our community."

Kelly says she received help from lawmakers in other states, including New York and California, that dealt with similar legislation. One main talking point among many of these fights across the country is how much of an impact this change could make for low-income women.

"The sales tax on these items does not amount to much," Kelly says. "But when you're trying to figure out if you can give your kid milk money or if you have enough to get your own lunch then it is impactful in a very significant way."

She acknowledges it's not a comfortable topic for discussion with her male colleagues. Kelly says they've been professional, but "it's definitely not something they are eager to discuss over the lunch table"

In some states the bill was circulated but not passed or signed. California Gov. Jerry Brown refused to sign the measure on the grounds that the state couldn't afford to lose revenue. In her new book about period equity, Weiss-Wolf estimates the revenue from menstrual products can range from "$1 million in Utah to $20 million in California."

"A lot of times they don't want to pass it because it's a budget issue ... they're in debt," Boxed's Mehta says. But, she says, "ultimately by saving women money on these items hopefully they will spend it on other items and have more disposable income."

In Nevada, a version passed last year is awaiting approval by the state's voters in a referendum scheduled for this November.

Similar legislation was introduced last year in Wisconsin, where it is awaiting a hearing.And so far in 2018, three more states have introduced anti-tampon tax legislation: Nebraska, Virginia and Arizona. In the latest attempt to pass the measure in Utah, the bill died in committee earlier this year.

"The tampon tax is an obvious example of unfair gender discrimination," says Virginia Delegate Kaye Kory, a Democrat. "It doesn't make sense." Kory's bill to end the tampon tax did not get a hearing in the legislative session that ended this month, but she plans to reintroduce it.
The pink tax
There is another seemingly unfair "tax" targeted at women: the pink tax. It's actually not a tax at all, but a charge tacked onto many women's products.

A 2015 study by the New York Department of Consumer Affairs compared nearly 800 retail items from over 90 brands ranging from children's toys to deodorant, specifically in search of potential gendered pricing.

For any given product, the "women's" version costs an average of 7 percent more than similar products for men, the study found. Of the 35 product categories tested, only five did not price higher for the women's version. Personal care products topped the list at an average of 13 percent more for women. Even something as universal as a bike helmet at Target cost $14.99 with sharks on it and $27.99 with unicorns on it, according to the 2015 study.

Some industry officials push back against these claims.

"Retailers see women as their biggest target," Ted Potrikus, CEO of the Retail Council of New York State, told USA Today. "Research and development, following trends, meeting trends, advertising products on television and in magazines are not cheap."

But other advocates say this is a misguided approach to advertising women's products, and may be due to women's underrepresentation in the advertising field. Although women have been a part of advertising since its conception, The New York Times reported that only 11 percent of creative directors are women.

One example of this would be the old advertising strategy "shrink it and pink it." This phrase refers to the popular marketing strategy of taking a men's or gender-neutral product, reducing the size of the packaging, and turning the bottle pink to target women, and then charging the same price or more than the comparable product.Although this idea may seem arcane, there is evidence to suggest some manufactures are still doing it.

And this discriminatory pricing also applies to services, advocates say.

"I find it offensive," says Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., who has a long history of standing up for women's economic rights.

In 1995, Speier, a state representative in California at the time, led the historic successful push in the stateto outlaw discriminatory pricing for haircuts, dry cleaning, car repairs and other services based on gender. Now she aims to do the same at the federal level, with a bill tentatively titled the Pink Tax Repeal Act. This bill, which she plans to introduce in the U.S. House later this year, will aim to restrict discriminatory pricing of services as well as goods.

She says many of her colleagues in the House didn't know such a disparity exists. "People are just astonished," she says.

Passing the legislation in the current political climate will be difficult, she concedes. But if it passes, she says, the bill would provide wide-reaching authority to combat the pink tax. "It allows the state attorneys generalto bring civil actions on behalf of the residents of the state to compel compliance," in addition to the standard enforcement abilities of the Federal Trade Commission, she says.

"It's a big lift to get it to move in this Congress," she says. "But I think it's important to roll it out and it's important to have a discussion about it."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
More States Move To End 'Tampon Tax' That's Seen As Discriminating Against Women

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ChapStick, Viagra and dandruff shampoo. These are just three of the thousands of health and personal care items that are exempt from sales tax in many U.S. states.Notably missing from that list: menstrual products. So far, nine states have exempted menstrual products from their sales tax, and seven have introduced legislation aimed at doing the same.

# data[].attributes.body
A whole day of the calendar year to remind us of women's accomplishments and contributions, while also looking into the need for more progress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
International Women's Day 2024 campaign theme: Inspire Inclusion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
FREE International Women's Day 2024 campaign theme resources to Inspire Inclusion - #IWD2024 #InspireInclusion