Archive for politics

Female Cartoonists Drawing Their Own Body

Common Folk loves art. Common Folk loves women. Common Folk loves people.

A few weeks ago, Buzzfeed actually had a pretty interesting piece about female cartoonists in a male dominated genre (imagine that) speaking and drawing about their bodies and self image. Definitely worth checking out. And while all are poignant and relevent, some are also hilarious.

Check out the whole article, here.

Some of my favorites of the illustrations and quotes:

lianna finck

“I love any excuse to look at naked bodies in a nonsexual context.” —Liana Finck

 

lucyknisley

“We need women’s bodies in our stories, having sex and getting our periods and eating food and doing whatever bodies do, so that the things our bodies do are normalized and present — so that boys don’t grow up thinking women are gross or whores or pigs or any other horrible epithet.” —Lucy Knisley

katie green

“Comics has been the perfect medium for capturing discomfort that is very real but isn’t visible to others… It’s been part of a very emotional process of accepting what my body has been through in pursuit of imagined perfection, and in survival and recovery from abuse.” —Katie Green

“You are asking a middle-aged female if an industry, which traditionally supports and advances the ethos of primarily young white males, has presented challenges to her in the almost 40 years she’s been producing comics. Where do I start?” —C. Tyler

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Great Video Series on Race

You can find their YouTube page here.

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The Revolution Will Not Be Monetized

With apologies to Gil Scott-Heron:

The Revolution Will Not Be Monetized
You will not be able to stay home, blogger.
You will not be able to plug in, log on and sign out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on facebook and tumblr,
Skip over Hulu commercials,
Because the revolution will not be monetized.

The revolution will not be monetized.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Geico
Online with limited commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Obama
live tweeting and streaming on YouTube,
with Bill Gates and Zuckerberg sipping five hour energy
drink from a SXSWi sanctuary.
The revolution will not be monetized.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
TED Conference and will not star Natalie Portman and Steve Wozniak or Colbert and Stewart.
The revolution will not give you six minute abs.
The revolution will not get rid of spam.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner,
because the revolution will not be monetized, blogger.

There will be no pictures of you and Derek Jeter pushing that Living Social deal down the web on the dead run,
or trying to slide that LCD television into a stolen healthcare plan.
CNN will not be able to predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 tweets*.
The revolution will not be monetized.

There will be no pictures of pigs tazing down
people in the YouTube replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs tazing down
people in the YouTube replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Houston being
run out of LA on a rail in a tragic death.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Russ
Feingold strolling through Madison in a Red, White and
Blue liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

The Voice, Real Housewives, and Glee
will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Don finally gets down with
Jane on Mad Men because people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be monetized.

There will be no highlights on Tumblr
news and no pictures of Occupy protesters
and Michelle Obama blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Miley Cyrus,
Kayne West, nor sung by Alicia Keys, LMAFO,
Bruno Mars, Toby Keith, or Bon Iver.
The revolution will not be monetized.

The revolution will not be right back after a pop up ad
about a white list, white hardware, or white people.
You will not have to worry about Intel inside,
solutions for a small planet, or thinking different.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not give you wings.
The revolution will not save you 15% on car insurance.

The revolution will not be monetized, will not be monetized,
will not be monetized, will not be monetized.
The revolution will be no podcasts blogger;
The revolution will be live.

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Words Of Wisdom: ?uestlove

Last week ?uestlove kicked off a 6 part series of essays on Vulture.com called When the People Cheer: How Hip-Hop Failed Black America that takes a look “at hip-hop’s recent past, thinking about its distant past, and wondering about the possibility of a future.”

You know it’s good when when he start’s off with quotes from John Bradford, Einstein, and Ice Cube (from his N.W.A days). And though the title focuses on Black America it’s really all about how hip hop rose from a black culture and has morphed into a mass culture dominating the mainstream with music and style. Along with that integration into the mainstream a lot of the fury and counterculture hip hop was built on has been diluted and turned back on itself, using it’s own power to ultimately subjugate itself.

Granted, the argument isn’t that easy or cut and dry. Being so accessible to mass culture has diluted the original invigorating elements but that’s still mostly only in the hip hop you’re going to ultimately find in pop culture. If you dig, it’s still there, there’s just more crap you have to dig through. I digress.

So far the first essay is incredible and even if I have arguments with some of the things ?uestlove says he puts things in a masterful way that lends themselves to debate and give and take as opposed to an all determinate I am right, you are wrong. ?uestlove, enigmatic drummer and hustler of culture.

Read NOW…

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He’s Only Pulling Your Ponytail Because He Likes You

He’s only pulling your ponytail because he likes you.

Or as I call it the conservative approach to feminism.

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Trayvon Martin

Photo by TheeBeatNikUnderground

Photo by TheeBeatNikUnderground

Two years later, Trayvon is still dead and Zimmerman is still free. Hood up…

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