A younger and much loved cousin contacted me recently, worried about the rising prices of Afropunk festival tickets for this year’s Brooklyn edition, which will be hosted this weekend. She reached out to me as I had told her of my plans to attend the festival with a friend. Besides her more general concerns that … Continue reading Pleasure and Pain: using spaces for amusement

Earlier this month singer Janelle Monáe issued a serious clapback to a Twitter follower who suggested she was too sexually attractive in her new song and its accompanying video Yoga: In Monáe's words: Nicely put Janelle. This response is in keeping with what has been part of Monáe's entire philosophy since entering the music industry … Continue reading Still Eating the Other…

Hello out there! I know it's been a while, but life has been all kinds of crazy/busy lately. To get you up to speed on what I've been up to, this past weekend, the ladies over at Radio Redmond Amsterdam hosted an event to promote "radical body love" and invited me along to host a … Continue reading Deconstructing the Media: Body Image & Systems of Oppression

So, this week it has been announced by the Amsterdam Court that the grotesque Dutch caricature Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) is in fact racist. It's not that this is news exactly but it is a major milestone in our fight against racist imagery throughout Europe and across the globe. This statement will send a much … Continue reading Zwarte Piet is (Officially) Racist: What’s Next?

You may have noted my gushing over actress Lupita Nyong’o’s recent (and now viral and widely praised) speech on black beauty over on the Invisible Bride blog toward the end of last week, and I wished her well in the impending 2014 Oscars race. Well – somewhat unsurprisingly – she won the Academy Award for … Continue reading Hollywood’s Selective Memory