Scarfs for Autism
Leo Chao, a student at Emily Carr University, designed the Beagle, a scarf that people can wrap around them. Texture, sounds, and even smells create a calming cocoon that will distract and soothe an autistic person when they’re feeling over stimulated. It’s the electronic version of a blankie that has actual health benefits.
(Source: feminist-fuel, via mallamun)
wow. this almost made me cry. *remembers childhood frustration and sadness of only having peach crayons be “flesh toned”*
Apparently I was “burnt umber,” according to my childhood crayon box.
Meet The Miss California USA Pageant’s First Out-And-Proud Lesbian Contestants
Mollie Thomas (top) is openly gay and competing in the Miss California USA pageant this weekend. Her tongue-in-cheek constituency? Miss Abbey West Hollywood.
In addition to being a stunner, Mollie’s a humanitarian who’s worked with disabled kids in Mongolia, at an elephant reserve in Thailand and built houses in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
And get this: she’s actually one of two out lesbians in the competition— hair stylist Janelle Hutcherson (bottom) is representing Long Beach.
Both these woman are pretty bad-ass: Janelle, who’s gonna rock a purple tux for the evening wear competition told the L.A. Times the pageant experience “very well may be the craziest, most insane, life experience I have put myself through yet!”
Mollie says on her website that she entered the competition, a prerequisite to the Miss USA contest, “not only to fulfill some of my own aspirations, but also to be a positive role model and inspiration for the LGBTQ community and for girls everywhere.”
You go, girls.
Generally when I choose to write about a film (or book) on here, it’s because a) that film/book sparked some intellectual interest in me, and/or b) I think it’s a film/book that deserves to reach a wider audience. I’m absolutely going to write something, for instance, about Weekend when it gets released on DVD in the States, considering its status as one of my very favorite movies of the year and the fact that it only played in a couple of cities here. I’m also planning on doing a brief series of short posts in January about films and elements of films that haven’t been discussed much in the awards conversation but deserve the attention. If you’re putting in the time to actually read something I write, I figure you ought to get something out of it, in the form of a piece of art that is actually worth something. That’s all to say that I don’t typically take the time to write about something I think is almost entirely without value.
But, you guys, I really need to talk about The Help.
I avoided seeing the movie this summer because I knew I wouldn’t like it and that it would make me angry, and because I didn’t want to give my money to yet another story about heroic white people helping out downtrodden black people. But the movie, and in particular Viola Davis and Jessica Chastain, have been very much in the aforementioned awards conversation, and I’m an Oscar junkie, and although there are some films I simply refuse to see (COUGH J. EDGAR COUGH) I figured I should probably give this one a spin. Plus, I’m a member at MoMA and they had a screening, which meant a free ticket for yours truly. So I went.
Very rarely do I find myself sitting in a movie theater actually physically uncomfortable because I am so angry. SERIOUSLY, IT DOESN’T HAPPEN A LOT, and I hate a lot of movies, guys. I hate a lot of movies. I like almost nothing. Like, seriously, dudes, I hated Like Crazy with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, and that was NOTHING compared to this shit. Nothing. I know that this is a very beloved book, and that it was also a very popular movie, and if you liked it I’m not trying to, you know, tell you you are a terrible person or whatever. But, also, it made me want to kill something, so, you know. I’m going to talk about it. That’s how it goes.
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It’s a time-honored tradition at Navy homecomings – one lucky sailor is chosen to be first off the ship for the long-awaited kiss with a loved one.
Today, for the first time, the happily reunited couple was gay.The dock landing ship Oak Hill has been gone for nearly three months, training with military allies in Central America.
As the homecoming drew near, the crew and ship’s family readiness group sold $1 raffle tickets for the first kiss. Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta bought 50 - which is actually fewer than many people buy, she said, so she was surprised Monday to find out she’d won.
Her girlfriend of two years, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell, was waiting when she crossed the brow.
They kissed. The crowd cheered. And with that, another vestige of the policy that forced gays to serve in secrecy vanished.
By Corinne Reilly
The Virginian-Pilot
© December 21, 2011
(via missweber)
20th of November is International Transgender Day of Remembrance.
International Transgender Day of Remembrance is a day to remember those who have lost their lives through transphobia. In the first nine months of 2011 there were 116 reported killings of trans people around the world. In Scotland, research shows that 62 percent of transgender people have faced transphobic harassment from strangers and that trans people are 7.7 times more likely to commit suicide than the rest of the population due to the prejudice they experience.
(via evawrites)
René Magritte “The Son of Man” 1964. About the painting Magritte said, “At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It’s something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.”
This right here is why René Magritte will forever be one of my favorite painters. I’m still very happy to have seen the original El castillo en los pirineos in person. It was a powerful feeling to see something like that so close after admiring the artist for so long.
(Source: kreendreem, via fuckyoursolarsystem)
