Perspectives on the Lupita Nyong'o hair story from someone worth listening to

The fallout from Lupita Nyong'o publicly calling out Grazia magazine for PhotoShopping out her natural hair led - and Grazia's bizarre, responsibility-shirking non-apology - to a pretty unseemly global spectacle. Plenty of white people were quick to jump on the "This is PC gone mad! Why is everything racist?" bandwagon.

But here's the thing - when a black woman calls out something that she believes to be racist and ignorant, she is worth listening to. Her perspective is different to someone who has never experienced a day's discrimination because of skin colour.

So, with that in mind, today I am handing my blog over to Annette Walker. She shared her views on why it matters that Lupita's proudly African hair was removed from a cover photo, puts the story into historical context and explains why it's not simply a matter of political correctness going too far.

Here are Annette's eloquent words:

The privilege of being free from such experiences can often trivialise these micro-aggressions of racism.

To understand the relevance of Lupita's objections it helps to understand the legacy of politicalisation of Black women's bodies - including hair - from a legacy of racism against the image of African peoples. It's so deep-rooted that Caribbean and African (and many other non-white) societies reject their own image in favour of Eurocentric ideology of beauty (lighter skin, straighter hair, straighter/narrower nose - Michael Jackson's cosmetic surgery is the poster for the deep-rooted psychological impact). 

Many in African and Caribbean communities struggle with the concept of thick, coarse, afro "kinky" hair as acceptable (soft, fine hair is favoured and considered "pretty"), and many afro hairstyles are considered inappropriate and unprofessional in workplaces (and schools). In contrast many non-white people often fetishise "natural" afro hair styles (the exotic other). 

My older relatives often talk about how they were unable to get jobs or be seen as professional if they wore their hair in its "natural" state (canerows and plaits were undesirable styles). These instances barely scratch the surface of the legacy of racism in relation to the image of black people. 

Hair fashions change, but the image of black women in fashion and media continues to be a racially political topic while racial inequality exists, whether or not it's overt or more subtle. The image of the black woman has endured centuries of injury and the legacy of this continues. 

Lupita is able to use her unique privilege to highlight just a tiny aspect of this issue and while not everyone might agree with the battles she chooses to pick, it's more damaging for things to be left unchallenged. 

It might seem a trivial matter that removing a ponytail was a non-racially motivated, photo-editing decision to tidy up an image but in this instance I agree with her with the wider implications. It highlights the ongoing racial undertones of the representation of beauty. 

Of course it wouldn't be the same story if a white model had her ponytail removed which is exactly the point why this needs to be addressed. From experience, I've learnt that as a black woman, the way I personally chose to wear my hair has social implications far more than just a personal choice of hairstyle. 

So it's good to be able to have this discussion in public because it's most often a silent battle falling on deaf ears that believe racism no longer exists.




Photography by Lilchim/Wikimedia Commons 

On fatness

Heather Heyer is dead, mown down by a car at the age of 32 in a counter-protest against white supremacists.

Twenty-year-old James Fields, an unambiguous supporter of Donald Trump and neo-Nazism, has been charged with second degree murder. Amid the many respectful tributes paid to Heyer, Andrew Anglin, the vile editor of the vile Daily Stormer website decided to stick his vile head over the moronic parapet and write a truly disgusting obituary. In his vomiting of hateful bile, he called her a "fat, childless, 32-year-old slut".

People like Anglin, who look upon The Handmaid's Tale as a manifesto rather than a stark warning, hate women when they don't marry as blushing young virgins so they can breed the next generation of arseholes. But it's his use of "fat" as an insult that I want to examine.

Why is it so awful to call someone, especially a woman, fat? Surely fat women simply need to toughen up, put the doughnuts down and lose some damn weight, right?

It's awful because what Anglin and his ilk are saying to women when they resort to "fat" as a criticism is that they are repelled by us, we are difficult, we refuse to conform to a stereotype, we have the temerity to take up too much space. And if we are outspoken as well, we are reduced to being good-for-nothing, fat, mouthy bitches who should shut up and quite literally shrink away. It's a sexist form of shorthand.

Of course the swift defence of anyone who routinely calls women fat is that they are merely worried about their health, as if fat people don't know they are fat, as if the health risks associated with being overweight are a state secret, as if the reasons for gaining weight don't vary, as if people put on weight deliberately to piss off the slender and sylph-like. Oh, please. Just stop. The "I'm just worried about your health, Fatty" is concern-trolling, justifying an unconstructive insult directed at someone who is probably well aware of their own body.

Even The Economist was disappointing in the wake of Heather Heyer's death. Amid an otherwise well-written obituary, the writer felt the need to mention her weight and her appearance in a way that would never have happened if it was a man who died that day in Charlottesville.

The obituary said: "She was bubbly, funny, strong-minded and, at 32, happy with herself, even if she put on weight too easily (cigarettes helped with that), and even if her hair had too much natural curl (she’d found products that really worked to sort the hair out, until some of her profile pix drew “Wow!” and “Saaaaaamokin!”)."

Jesus, really? What a reductive and depressing load of crap. How is the conversation following the events in Charlottesville advanced by mentioning Heather's weight, or that she resorted to cigarettes to control her weight, or that she used hair products to restrain her naturally curly hair until she was rewarded with the ultimate accolade of the Facebook age, of being told one's profile picture is hot? 

Why perpetuate the grim narrative of women's bodies, right down to the hair on our heads, being things that need to be controlled, even when you are protesting against goddamn neo-Nazis?

The news cycle moves on from Heyer's death, even if the story of race relations in the US and whether people need to see statues of Confederate generals in public to stop themselves from enslaving people rages on. Amid the noise, there was the story of actress Gemma Arterton claiming that she was sent a personal trainer on location in Morocco, put on a ridiculous diet, and filmed in the gym so that studio bosses were reassured that she was losing weight in order to meet the required standard of hotness deemed suitable for starring in The Prince of Persia.

Obviously, this led to comparisons with male stars going to great lengths, including unhealthy methods such as dehydration, to become muscle-bound, six-pack-owning gods for film roles, in the usual attempts to minimise what a woman had to say on the matter. 

Firstly, pointing out what women are forced to go through to meet a silver screen ideal does not negate the experience of men who are put in a similarly unhealthy position. Christian Bale nearly died when he lost weight to play a desperate insomniac in The Machinist and people were, rightly, shocked when they saw his skeletal form in the film, 

Secondly, it is the disproportionate numbers that make the situation especially absurd for women. When men lose weight or bulk up for roles, it's pretty much always integral to the role, such as Robert De Niro as a boxer in Raging Bull, Russel Crowe in Gladiator, or Robert Downey Jr for the Iron Man series. 

Actresses are, however, forced to lose weight, usually off already slender bodies, to play lawyers, waitresses, teachers, stay-at-home mothers and so on and so forth... It's not the same as losing weight to play a ballerina or a gymnast. It's pathetic that this is considered simply part and parcel of being an actress, as if people will stay away from the cinema in droves if the lead actress is anything bigger than a size 8. 

We never heard Tom Hanks pontificate on losing weight via a diet of dried apricots and birdseed for Bridge of Spies or Liam Neeson forcing himself to hit the gym for several hours a day to play a single dad in Love, Actually.

Whether it's about slagging off a woman for paying the ultimate price for protesting, or actresses whittling themselves down even if there is no real reason in the script for doing so, it's still sexist bullfuckery. It is about keeping the focus on women's bodies, regardless of their size, when there are more important things to be discussing - but woe betide the woman who discusses the important things while not being in possession of a wasp-like waist or cellulite-free thighs. 

It's about putting women in their place - and that place is a skinny box where they are inoffensive and quiet and, above all, not disruptive.




Photography by Georgia Lewis     

   

Sexist legsit for Brexit...

Women MEPs are concerned about the impact of Donald Trump bringing back the global gag rule.

The Daily Mail - at least for England and Wales - reduced Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon to their pins yesterday. Accompanying a rather leg-oriented front page picture, the eternally asinine Sarah "Don't you dare accuse me of feminism" Vine felt the need to write a piece about how the legs of the Prime Minister and Scotland's First Minister were their greatest weapons in their ongoing wrangling over Scottish independence and Brexit. A "light-hearted" take on it all, according to the Daily Mail. 

"Never mind Brexit, who won legs-it?" was emblazoned across the front page.

Nothing screams "serious journalism" like a line that is basically the world's creepiest Dad joke. 

It was just like the time the Mail reported on the peace agreement between Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak back in 2000 and Sarah Vine wrote that hilarious piece about who had the firmest arse in the Middle East. Or her witty ode to Putin and Obama after their awkward handshake in Lima last year in which she declared each man's biceps would be used to forge a bold new relationship between their countries.

Except that never bloody happened. Instead, Sarah Vine wrote a parody-defying load of tripe for yesterday's paper, the journalistic equivalent of taking upskirt photos on a tube station escalator. She came across like a sex pest. Well played, sister!

The Daily Mail issued an explanation. It was just a joke and, anyway, we did loads of serious coverage on Brexit! Bags of it! The crazy feminists clearly need to lighten up! 

Except that every time female politicians are belittled, reduced to their body parts, when their legs or their tits or their clothes or their hair or their faces are the focus, not their policies or ideas, it makes it that little bit harder to encourage smart women to enter politics. And it makes it that little bit harder for women in general to be taken seriously.

The Mail's explanation also pointed out that they're an equal opportunity body snarker - they've also run photos of David Cameron looking a bit portly while on holiday, that sort of thing. Er, yeah. Two things, Dacre. Firstly, it's still gross to reduce male politicians to their body parts too. Secondly, even when the Mail runs such nonsense, it's not usually tied to the biggest political story of the week. The coverage when men do politics is far more respectful.

Of course, plenty of right-wing anti-feminist apologists piped up with their latest lame zinger. "Why are women angry about this when there is FGM and IS is making Yazidi girls and women sex slaves?". Er yeah. Two things, dickheads. Firstly, IT IS POSSIBLE TO CARE ABOUT MORE THAN ONE THING AT A TIME EVEN WITH OUR LITTLE LADY-BRAINS! Secondly, when you are the same people who would deny foreign aid to help stop FGM or to offer shelter, healthcare and employment training to Yazidi girls and women, you are monstrous hypocrites with zero right to tell women how to do feminism.

And when women are belittled out of putting themselves forward as leaders because of the constant sexist noise over which they must shout to be heard, there won't be as many women in positions of real power who are able to stand up for oppressed women everywhere.

In any case, the "Never mind Brexit, who won legs-it?" debacle, it really is a microcosm of the Daily Mail/Daily Express/Sun mentality on the issue of leaving the European Union. The one-liner encapsulates perfectly the simplistic Brexiter mentality, the one where self-serving con artists like Nigel Farage convince people that there is nothing to worry about, that the process of making trade deals and sifting through EU law will be a piece of cake. These people say without irony that it could all be sorted out in a month. These people are irresponsible idiots who make Britain a dumber place. 

Worse, it reflects the mentality of the right-leaning Brexiter of not wanting to take any actual responsibility for the whole shit-show - they do not want to acknowledge the inevitable problems it has caused and will cause and they do not want to do any of the tedious dirty work involved in ensuring leaving the EU doesn't reduce Britain to a joke nation.

Nope, these pathetic dinosaurs are the deluded fools who voted to leave because of some misguided notion that it was better in the good, old days, even though the good, old days were, frankly, a bit shit. But, hey, at least back then, we could all could openly ogle a woman's legs in peace without those feminazis getting upset, am I right...

Image: European Parliament/Flickr

The great Beach Body backfire

Bright yellow advertisements for weight loss products have improved/degenerated the commute for Londoners on the tube network in the past few weeks. These ads scream the stupid question: "ARE YOU BEACH BODY READY?" at us alongside a picture of a woman in a bikini looking both slim and impressive of bosom all at once. In other words, she possesses a body type few of us have thanks to Mother Nature, some of us will attain through assorted methods, and most of us will never have.

In reality, if you share the model's waist size, you are more than likely to be small-breasted. If you share her generous cup size, the rest of you may well be in proportion too. Of course, there are exceptions as there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to body type - and that is why it is ridiculous that body types go in and out of fashion over the decades.

The obvious answer to the stupid question is: "Yes, I am beach body ready. I have a body and I am capable of taking it to the beach where I will be ready to do beach-related things."

There has been an outcry over these ads. The Advertising Standards Authority received more than 200 complaints. The posters have been improved/vandalised by protesters. I saw one on the tube tonight that had "Stop objectification" written on it.

So what has happened as a result of the brouhaha? Sales of the weight loss products went up.

Of course they did. Proving that any publicity is good publicity, the winner is Protein World. Which sounds like the worst-ever amusement park.

The two most likely reasons for this sales spike are equally depressing. If people have decided to spite those awful feminists by buying Protein World products, they are a bit sad. They are probably the same idiots who hijacked the #FeministsAreUgly hashtag on Twitter.

And the other equally depressing reason why Protein World got a boost in sales is that people wanted to see what all the fuss was about, decided they were not "beach body ready" and, as a result, have been conned into buying a completely moronic product. We are talking about capsules and meal replacements. Short-term quick fixes.

It is a get-rich-quick scheme for Protein World that does nothing to promote learning to prepare healthy meals or the benefits of regular exercise. These shysters are selling crap like "green tea extract powder" for £12. You can buy 80 green teabags for £2.80 today at Sainsburys. They're even fair-trade teabags.

So it would seem Protein World is appealing to snide feminist-haters, uneducated consumers and people desperate for a quick fix rather than a healthy lifestyle change.

Changing your lifestyle is boring but it works out cheaper and more effective in the long run than replacing meals with a £62 package of "The Slender Blend" meal replacement potion and multivitamin capsules.

If you bought Protein World products because you hate feminists, the joke is on you. You are now the proud owner of stupid, overpriced supplements all because you wanted to make a pathetic point. If you were fooled by the advertising campaign and truly think replace meals with overproduced slop in a glass is the way forward, I feel sorry for you. You have been tricked by a marketing campaign where not only does the model have a rare body type, she also has the benefit of good lighting and possibly the miracle of PhotoShop.

Protein World and similar companies will continue to use such models for their campaigns. Of course they will. Let's be realistic. Ann Widdecombe will not be the next face and body of Protein World.

But that does not mean you have to be an idiot consumer. All this beach body brouhaha has demonstrated is that many people are easily fooled. And that is most depressing of all.




Photography by Gerhard Lipold

Fannying about in Sydney

Honi Soit is the newspaper produced by University of Sydney students for University of Sydney students. But the latest cover, reproduced here in all its uncensored glory, has been recalled after a farce that proved exactly why such a cover image is important.

While Honi Soit is pretty hard to come by outside of Sydney University, the Student Representative Council feared that such a cover may break Australian media laws. They would be the same media laws that led to the now-defunct Australian edition of FHM requiring a very busy band of re-touch artists to ensure that errant pubes or vulva outlines were eradicated from covers and inside pages back when I worked there. I recall seeing an advance copy of a mag and marvelling at a model's crotch - her white bikini was indecently damp and the result was a smoothed-out PhotoShop vulva. It looked like she was wearing a crash helmet down there.

Fear turned to farce for Honi Soit when black bars were placed over the visible labia and clitoris. Except the bars weren't entirely opaque and the SRC absurdly called for all copies to be removed from the stands, returned to the Honi Soit office and locked up.

Good grief. Student newspapers exist to challenge the status quo, to take risks, to give voice to opinions that will often be sadly silenced when students graduate and find themselves in the self-censoring corporate world. Honi Soit editor, Hannah Ryan, was not afraid of breaking the law but the SRC panicked. Inevitably, the uncensored cover has been shared far and wide thanks to the internet making a joke of Australian media laws. It is probably the most widely viewed Honi Soit cover in the newspaper's long history.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the university's vice-chancellor Dr Michael Spence "defended the paper's editorial freedom but criticised the cover."

He said: "Personally my view is the cover is demeaning to women but I do realise I'm not the target audience for Honi Soit. However, the student body at the University of Sydney has a long and proud tradition of independence and it's a tradition we will continue to uphold."

Er, so he didn't really defend any freedoms at all then. The 18 women involved in the cover all posed willingly and it was created with the support of the university's Women's Collective. It was shot in the university's Women's Room. These women are not ashamed and nor should they be. But thank you, Dr Spence, for telling us these women have demeaned themselves and all women. Where would we all be without this man to tell us what to think?

On the upside, thanks to the power of the internet, a selection of real women's vulvas have been shared globally. If this means that even one young man or teenage boy learns that not every woman has a denuded symmetrical crotch that looks like a plastic taco shell, that is a good thing.  No, I am not a mother. Yes, I would happily let any future teenage son of mine see the Honi Soit cover. What are you going to do, Moral Panic Merchants? Call Social Services in advance lest I end up being a bad mother sometime in about 2030?

Fear of pubes is nothing new, despite what anti-porn campaigners might think. We have a worldwide archive of centuries of art where pubic hair has been diligently eliminated and the pudenda is always neat and tucked away.

A sense of shame, fear and revulsion surrounding real female bodies is nothing new. This, in turn, breeds some awful attitudes towards women's bodies by men and distressingly negative attitudes in women about themselves. The ongoing existence of ridiculous media laws and the resulting panic, such as that exhibited by the SRC, demonstrates exactly why we need to see more images that challenge our collective fear and prudery, not less.

 

Click here to read the blog post from Lily Patchett, one of the 18 women who featured on the cover.

Image courtesy of Honi Soit

"I saw your boobs!" "I saw the Outrage Olympics!"

The internet is still buzzing over whether Seth MacFarlane is a hate-filled misogynistic pig after his turn at hosting the Oscars the other night. In particular, the "I Saw Your Boobs" song has attracted much outrage. That'd be the pre-recorded stunt in which Naomi Watts and Charlize Theron, two of the actresses named in the song, were willing participants in the joke.

The overwhelming reaction to this song was a festival of missing the point. As Seth MacFarlane and the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles tunefully rattled off a litany of silver screen breast appearances, pearls were clutched all over the place. Special outrage was saved for his name-checking of actresses who showed their breasts while playing characters who were raped.

Was I the only person who saw this as a satire on the rationalisation process actresses go through when they appear nude on camera for serious roles? How many times have we heard actresses say with a perfectly straight face that the nudity was essential to the storyline or the development of the character? It's artistic nudity as opposed to X-rated movie nudity, so the narrative goes. And, just as the "I Saw Your Boobs" routine demonstrated ironically, it's seldom career suicide to go naked for a serious role. The song listed amazing performances by talented actresses who are clearly valued for more than their breasts.

When I worked at FHM in Australia, the "would you go nude for a role?" question was asked of pretty much every actress who appeared in the magazine when they appeared for a shoot in either lingerie or a bikini. Even a ditzy soap opera star who was hardly likely to end up in a remake of Monster's Ball would give the cookie cutter "If it's appropriate for the role..." answer.

It's certainly more refreshing to hear about actresses who question the need for nudity and have won the battle to not get their breasts out. In today's Metro, Mia Wasikowska says that she has indeed turned down nude scenes and questioned their relevance to the script.

Actresses who chooses to go nude for a scene of sexual abuse don't do it to titillate the audience. But once that scene is out there, there is nothing to stop moviegoers from being aroused even if it is a thoroughly traumatic scene. As such, supposedly high-end men's magazines, such as GQ, have run galleries of breasts in movies and there are countless websites and forums dedicated to leering over naked actresses and flagging up films that feature breasts, bums and vulvae.

No actress has ever said: "Yes, I got naked because I knew it would get bums on cinema seats, turn people on and make the studio pots of money." but that doesn't stop some people from seeing movies because they want to see breasts. People can be creepy.

Perhaps now we can have a conversation on why breasts even need to feature in rape scenes at all. These scenes are always hard to watch, and the sounds and facial expressions of both victim and perpetrator can speak volumes without anyone's private parts being exposed. Such a conversation sounds like a rather po-faced outcome of a comedy sketch, but comedy should exist as a catalyst for serious discussion.

It is stunning that the joke needs to be explained. Did everybody miss the irony of a group of gay men singing about the joys of seeing boobs? Yes, it was a bit puerile but taking the piss out of the earnestness of actresses who've gone nude is a perfectly valid topic for satire. The mention of us seeing Scarlett Johansson's boobs on our phones was a bit unnecessary as that was breast exposure without her consent, but the rest of the song's content was fair game.

Are you wondering why the song wasn't called "I Saw Your Dick"? Off the top of my head, I can recall seeing three actor penises: Harvey Keitel in The Piano, Kevin Bacon in Wild Things and Michael Fassbender in Shame. That is three penises since 1993. Or an average of one cinematic willy every 6.666 years.

There's a gender divide in getting naked to get credibility. That is absolutely worth a spot of satire at the annual festival of frocks, red carpet body snarking, insincerity and nauseating self-congratulation.


Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com

Off with her head! Behold, it's Hilary Mantel hysteria!

Beheading people for treason isn't really the done thing in Britain these days. It is mildly terrifying that the last person executed in Britain for treason was not so long ago - it was William Joyce, hanged in 1946, the year my father was born. But even though treason is still an offence here, surely we are not interesting in reverting to the dark days of calling for people's heads to be severed from their necks. Or are we?

Given the kneejerk public reactions to the abysmal reporting of Hilary Mantel's erudite, fascinating and articulate London Review of Books Winter lecture, I am not so sure we have moved on from an era of hysterically waving pitchforks and wanting to see blood spilled as judicial entertainment.

The lecture, entitled Royal Bodies, actually took place two weeks ago so the journalists of the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Independent and Metro were not exactly on the ball. But a 5,000-word lecture, with all its nuances and historical context, does not make for a sexy news story. It is far easier to lazily pick the eyes out of the lecture, offer quotes out of context, get a shedload of easy hits to your website and watch as the easily outraged readers believe the shoddy journalism. Hell, it's not as if they're going to bother to read or hear what Mantel had to say.

And because Mantel dared to mention that most pristine and sacred of all media cows in her lecture, the Duchess of Cambridge, it was so easy to set her up as an object of hate. The lecture was an attack on the obsession by the media and the public with not just the body of Duchess of Cambridge but the bodies of royal women throughout the centuries. The fascination over whether Anne Boleyn was going to produce a male heir for Henry VIII in the sixteenth century is no different to the womb watching that Kate has to endure.

Of course, reading Mantel's well-written words was too hard for the foaming-at-the-mouth masses. It was far easier to look at the photo of Mantel, juxtaposed beside a winsome shot of the Duchess, and conclude that she is fat, unattractive and jealous of Kate's body and marriage. 

Never mind that Mantel has publicly spoken about her battle with endometriosis, a condition which has left her overweight and infertile. Never mind that she is the patron of an endometriosis charity. Never mind that she speaks with humour and grace on the trials and tribulations of being a large woman in a world were the sylph-like are worshipped. Never mind that Mantel has been married since 1972. It is clearly a resilient relationship - the marriage ended in divorce in 1979 but the couple then remarried. If Mantel was truly snide and vile, she might have alluded to the fact that she worked on her own marriage and gained a stronger relationship as a result, unlike many a disastrous royal union.

But in the minds of the angry mob, her only motivation for saying anything remotely critical of the saintly Duchess is jealousy and hatred. 

Even David Cameron felt the need to weigh in from India. Like almost everyone else who has shot their mouths and keyboard fingers off today, he obviously didn't bother to find out exactly what Mantel said and instead rose to her defence like a pathetic, populist knight in shining armour.

And then Ed Miliband took time out to defend Kate. Seriously, Ed, come on. There's an NHS to defend but instead, he also jumped aboard a populist steed of his own, donned the armour of lameness, and said: "These are pretty offensive remarks. I don't agree with them." Oh, and he added the usual mindless twaddle about how hard the Duchess works.

Have we reached a place where only thin, pretty women married to princes are allowed to comment on thin, pretty princesses? The furore echoes the sexist attempts to silence the brilliant Professor Mary Beard simply because she expressed a mildly controversial opinion and doesn't live up to some ridiculous standard of female hotness.

The defenders of Kate's virtue clearly didn't read to the very end of Mantel's piece because then they might have realised that she was calling for kindness towards the Duchess, for us to not be so obsessed by her body and the contents therein. 

In the last paragraph, this is what Mantel wrote: "We don't cut off the heads of royal ladies these days, but we do sacrifice them them, and we did memorably drive one to destruction a scant generation ago. History makes fools of us, makes puppets of us, often enough. But it doesn't have to repeat itself. In the current case, much lies within our control. I'm not asking for censorship. I'm not asking for pious humbug and smarmy reverence. I'm asking us to back off and not be brutes."

You'd be hard pressed to find a more eloquent way to tell the media and the public to not behave like voyeuristic dickheads where royal bodies are concerned. But you'd have to read 5,000 words, many of them with more than one syllable, to find this eloquence. Nah, it's much easier to simply swallow the moronic hysteria generated by lazy journalists and slag off the fat woman instead.


Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com