A weekly news round up on the state of Body Politics & Body Justice

 

•  This week there was a Twitterstorm when the hashtag #TraditionallySubmissive started trending after UK Prime Minister David Cameron said that Muslim women are traditionally submissive. Fariha Khan writes her response for Huff Post UK.  Ruwan AubShaban discusses being othered and anti-muslim prejudice in an essay about her life as a muslim in middle America after living in a cosmopoatin city. In it she shares the project Human of the MSA (Muslim Student Association) founded by UC Berkeley students and inspired by Humans of New York’s efforts to focus on sharing the stories of Muslims in the US, Pakistan and Iran.

 

• The horrors around the water crisis in Flint Michigan keep growing; State government officials were providing bottled water to employees nearly a year ago before notifying residence to possible lead poisoning in September; It’s not just in Flint, cities throughout Michigan are experiencing high rates of lead poisoning; Although the water crisis has been named a federal state of emergency, residents are being sent overdue water bills, Flint’s water costs are among the highest in the United States. Mother Jones talks to Lee Ann Walter, a concerned mother turned activist who was offered a garden hose when her water tested 27 times the EPA limit for lead.

 

• Oliver Glass speaks to the stigma of mental health Blacks face in the community and in society at large as the Black experience of mental health conditions are often invalidated by racism. “In reality, there are many factors that influence how a person interacts with mental illness, such as elements of shame, religion, fear and trauma. There are also many barriers to access mental health care, especially for queer Black folks, who are impacted by intersecting systems of classism, sexism and racism.”

 

• Members of the 30 year old anonymous female art collective, The Guerilla Girls appeared on Stephen Colbert this month and were full of golden observations about the art world. ‘Every aesthetic decision, Frida points out, reflects a value system, and if the values are determined by wealthy men, then art museums are not truly representative… Unless all the voices of our culture are in the history of art, it’s not really a history of art—it’s a history of power….’

 

• Huff Post puts together a list of NSFW options in men’s lingerie. Whether you find that appealing or not, it says a lot about how gender norms are receding and it’s time to embrace male identifying people presenting as feminine. Jaden Smith appears in his second high end fashion campaign wearing a skirt and has been lauded for both being ‘genderfluid’ and chastised for ‘encroaching’ on transgender identities. Black Girl Dangerous breaks down how neither is necessarily true. “Gender presentation refers to the ways in which we express our gender. This kind of expression can be through how we move, the way we do our hair, and the clothes we wear. While gender presentation is able to do a lot to project a person’s personal gender identity, it doesn’t have to.” Buzzfeed features a list of 30 gender non-conforming/gender non-binary beautiful people.

 

• In the face of #Oscarsowhite and the the backlash directed at the Oscars for not recognizing diversity, Gina Rodriguez launched #MovementMondays to celebrate Latino talent and bring the community together.” The Mary Sue reports, “Reelblack shared an interview with Ava DuVernay yesterday which revealed that DuVernay’s first television show, Queen Sugar, will have an all-women directorial team.” Eleven year old Marley Dias is starting a diversity campaign of her own. #1000BlackGirlBooks is a campaign to bring diversity and representation in the books available at her school. The book drive aims to collect 1,000 children’s books where black girls are leading characters. #represenationmatters. 

 

• Writer Danielle Sepulveres teamed up with illustrator Maritza Lugo to create images of Disney princesses visiting sexual health clinics. The pair have released the images to mark Cervical Cancer Prevention Week.  January marks Cervical Awareness Month.