“if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product” i think to myself as i eye suspiciously the free ham samples at Trader Joe’s
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so, let's talk about this. because it's not quite true
Barbie was not the only fashion doll on the market (much less the only one to ever exist, a worrying claim from the first Barbie movie trailer). Dolls like Madame Alexander's Cissy, Ideal's Miss Revlon, and Uneeda's Dollikin were all available before Barbie's 1959 release
While Mattel would love for you to believe that Barbie was the first, Cissy- released in 1955 -would like a word.
Ruth Handler might well have SAID that she "noticed the only dolls on the market were babies," but she and her husband ran an existing toy company; Barbie was not Mattel's first project. She 100% would have been aware of the other fashion dolls available. In short: if she said that, she was...almost certainly stretching the truth.
There was indeed pushback against fashion dolls from cultural commentators who thought little girls should only play with baby dolls, to encourage Maternal Instincts(TM)...but that dates at least back to the French fashion dolls of the 1860s-1890s, which were accused of making little girls "worldly" in magazines of the day. It wasn't a new idea developed especially in response to Barbie.
What set Barbie apart from other fashion dolls was twofold:
- She was smaller and cheaper. Cissy retailed for like $13 in just her lingerie, which was quite pricey for a doll at the time (Barbie cost $3 originally), and stood 20" tall. Miss Revlon was similarly large and unwieldy for a child to carry around. As I understand it, Handler noticed her daughter's fondness for movie star paper dolls and sought to create a 3-dimensional version.
- She had an adult face. As you can see above, Cissy may have had breasts, but she was also quite baby-faced. Barbie, with her arched brows and narrow cheeks, looked more like an adult woman in her facial proportions.
Still unusual! Just not unique
But I'm not really here to split hairs about which was the actual first 1950s fashion doll. My main thesis is this: Barbie was NOT originally meant to be empowering.
...or disempowering. Or anything but a fashion doll for which a businesswoman trying to make money felt there was a niche.
Yes, she had a career at the beginning- as a fashion model. Hardly a job many men were trying to keep women out of. The first non-modeling careers she had were ballerina, flight attendant, and registered nurse, female-dominated fields that nobody was challenging women's right to pursue.
(Original Barbie box. If you can't read the text, it says "Barbie(T.M.) Teen Age Fashion Model.")
That's not to say that Handler was completely without deeper thoughts on Barbie's place in the world. She was adamant that, while Barbie might model a bridal gown, she would never actually marry Ken to prevent her from being tied down as a wife and mother. And certainly later in her life, she got onboard with the "girls can do anything!" messaging of later Barbie generations.
But to say that Barbie was intended to be #empowering or make a statement from the beginning is just revisionist history that's bound to leave people disappointed. I mean, what's Twitter OP going to think when they discover that an early Barbie babysitting set came with a little book called "How to Lose Weight" that simply said "Don't eat!" on the back? Handler was still president of the company at the time- how does that fit with this starry-eyed vision of her creating an empowering doll for little girls?
Putting Barbie on a pedestal is going to lead to just as rude an awakening as casting her in the "worthless bimbo doll" role.
I was a misogynist as a child because I wanted to be the first woman to do everything. There's a photo of me crying when Julia Gillard became Prime Minister because I wanted to be the first female PM
My options being exhausted, I chose to transition to male
No.... NO!!!!!
There's a handful of notes on this going "well fuck you, do you know how hard it is to BE the speaker and not have anyone greet you?" and uh, yes, yes I do, because I did those stupid ass soft skills/resilience/insert other assorted nonsense workshops for schools for a living for a while, and I still agree with this.
The key to being an effective speaker is the ability to understand your audience. You need to understand people in order to build a rapport with them. And you need to build a rapport with them in order to effectively guide them from where they are, to where you need them to be.
So. Here is the situation from the perspective of the audience: this random person, whom they have never met before and do not care about, is being paid by employers/school powers that be to come speak on a thing. In other words, the speaker is the one benefitting from being there. Meanwhile, the audience has likely been ordered to be there, for no immediate, tangible benefit in return. It is early in the morning, they are sleep-deprived and under-caffeinated, they have a shit ton of stuff on their to-do list, they are unconvinced whatever the speaker is going to say is going to be of any use or relevance whatsoever, and so they see this talk as a waste of time that they could instead be spending on sleep or at least finishing off things that are actually necessary for work/school. And now this rando, whom I repeat, is supposed to be the service provider, whose presence is already a pain, is asking for even more effort on the audience's part by asking them to smile and be chipper. All before saying a single other word that might convince said audience that they are going to get any benefit whatsoever out of being there. Fuck that.
You gotta understand, you are not some rock star that people are already invested in and actively want to see. Those get to do the "scream! I can't hear you! LOUDER!" thing. The fact of the matter is, you are probably someone your audience has no interest in seeing, and until you give them a reason for wanting to be there, you cannot ask them for even more emotional effort. That's not going to endear them to you.
I am by no means a particularly great speaker, but I can tell you now that I have gotten far more immediate rapport and engagement by simply going "hello hello, morning, how is everyone?" and then when I get the predictably unenthusiastic mass groaning and grumbling, and unenergetic "morning"s back in return, replying "heh, big mood. It's final project season innit; how sleep deprived are y'all? --yeouch, intense, well I'll try my best to keep this as painless as I possibly can; I'm here today to talk about--" etc etc. Simple, sympathetic, and while it's not the most energetic and enthusiastic thing in the world, it puts me on "their" side and opens a connection that I can build on for the rest of the talk, instead of instantly making my audience feel 10x more tired and hostile.
If you are not a speaker being paid to be there, but are instead someone giving a presentation for an assignment or presenting a paper or whatever, then I've found that being sincere and a little self-deprecating, possibly just a tiny bit vulnerable works pretty well: "Oh god, so full disclosure, I don't speak very often and I'm sweating bullets right now, and also I tend to babble like a bullet train when I'm nervous so if at any point you cannot understand me please ask me to slow down, but I have a thing I need to present, and I think it's pretty cool, and hopefully you do too." Your audience has probably been in your shoes before, and are now inclined to be nice to you out of sympathy.
In both cases, it's about understanding your listeners and where you stand in relation to them and using that to build that initial connection. You cannot demand connection; it never fucking works.
People die on the job every summer. Remember that water and shade breaks are crucial when working in the heat, and calling emergency services for signs of serious heat illness (fatigue, nausea/vomiting, headaches, dizziness, clammy skin, confusion, agitation, slurred speech, high body temperature, rapid heart rate, etc.) is entirely appropriate. If you’re afraid to call 911 for reasons such as being undocumented, you’ll need to get very familiar with how to prevent, recognize, and treat heat illness. If you are symptomatic and not allowed a break, water, or medical treatment, walk out. No matter how broke you are, your job is not worth your life.
I need everyone to see this picture of a porcupine looking at stingrays in an aquarium
Dressing to the nines I see
Dressing to the spines
Out of all the cool stuff that mythbusters ever shot on high speed camera, shooting a soccer ball at 60mph out of a truck traveling 60mph is one of my favorites
Just look at it. It is the most perfect visual representation of Newton’s 2nd law of physics I’ve ever seen. The ball, which was shot out of a CANNON, drops straight down. Two equal and opposite velocities completely canceling each other out, leaving the soccer ball to drop to the earth with a net velocity of 0. Sir issac newton would be proud to tears of this gif.
And yet this “myth” is nothing more than basic physics at work. A 10 year old with an interest in science could have told us this is possible. 60mph in one direction minus 60mph the exact opposite direction is 0. Basic.
But what makes this so frieken cool is the fact that they went through all the trouble to actually demonstrate the invisible laws that govern the way our universe works. To get this shot both the soccer ball and the truck had to be moving at the exact same speed. Real world variables make that extremely difficult to pull off. It took them hundreds of attempts to get it right. They went through all that trouble to “prove” something we have known as fact for hundreds of years. And we get this amazing gif to watch as a result.
Mythbusters is incredible. Science is incredible. And the fact that this experiment in physics can be used in science classes for years and years to come to help children learn about physics is incredible.
The best is when they do the classic "airplane on conveyor belt" problem with an actual airplane on an actual convaoyer belt and some actual pilots were like "it won't take off" and then it did
and people are STILL mad about it, convinced the Mythbusters didn't set it up properly.
What able bodied authors think I, an amputee and a wheelchair user, would want in a scifi setting:
- Tech that can regenerate my old meat legs.
- Robot legs that work just like meat legs and are functionally just meat legs but robot
- Literally anything that would mean I don't have to use a wheelchair.
- If I do need to use a wheelchair, make it fly or able to "walk me" upstairs
What I actually want:
- Prosthetic covers that can change colour because I'm too indecisive to pick one colour/pattern for the next 5+ years.
- A leg that I can turn off (seriously, my above knee prosthetic has no off switch... just... why?)
- A leg that won't have to get refitted every time I gain or loose weight.
- A wheelchair that I can teleport to me and legs I can teleport away when I'm too tierd to keep walking. And vice versa.
- In that same vein, legs I can teleport on instead of having to fiddle around with the sockets for half an hour.
- Prosthetic feet that don't require me to wear shoes. F*ck shoes.
- Actually accessible architecture, which means when I do want to use my wheelchair, it's not an issue.
- Prosthetic legs with dragon-claw feet instead of boring human feet or just digigrade prosthetics that are just as functional as normal human-shaped ones.
- A manual wheelchair with the option to lift my seat up like those scissor-lift things so I'm not eye-level with everyone's butt on public transport/so I can reach the top shelf by myself.
- A prosthetic foot that lights up when it hits the ground like those children's shoes.
