The U.S. Army Says Hello to Its First Openly Gay General [Lgbt]

Aug 12, 2012 3:00 PM  

Brig. Gen. Tammy Smith has become the U.S. Army's first openly gay general after being promoted from colonel on Friday at Arlington National Cemetary. Smith is the highest-ranking gay or lesbian officer to acknowledge her sexuality during service, and her promotion comes nearly a year after the reversal of "don't ask, don't tell." Smith's wife, Tracey Hepner, pinned Smith's star insignia on her during the ceremony, which was sort of a huge deal because, before the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," Smith and Hepner couldn't appear together as a military couple during official functions.

Though Smith says she recognizes the social significance of her promotion, she insists that her duties as a newly-minted brigadier general are of more immediate importance. "All of those facts [about the social significance of her promotion] are irrelevant," Smith said after the ceremony. "I don't think I need to be focused on that. What is relevant is upholding Army values and the responsibility this carries."

With promotion, U.S. Army welcomes first openly gay general [LA Times]

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I Was a Grade School Nudist [First Person]

Yes, I know that every kid is a nudist. But I really was one.  Like, officially. As in, card carrying member of the ASA (American Sunbathing Association.) As in going to special places — nudist camps, or if would want to make them sound really creepy and culty, nudist colonies — which were created for no other reason than so people could walk around naked.

This was the Shameful Secret of my childhood, like having an alcoholic mother who hit or an uncle who touched you in the areas where the bathing suit covers. No one was to know. As you may recall, I grew up in the 1970s, the time of hippies, macrame owls and mushroom decor, but I grew up in 1970s Georgia, a place of macrame owls, etc..., but also a very conservative, uptight place. It was a place where every white family had a black maid named something like Mavis, vegetarians were suspect and you sure as fuck weren't supposed to be something as whack as a nudist.

Nudism, then as probably now, was considered to be something weird, at the very least, and at the worse, probably sexual. Not sexual in a particularly nameable way but just...wrong. Naked = sex, end of story.

The reality, which would become apparent to anyone who spent 2 minutes at a nudist camp, is that they are about a sexual as any average RV park. Picture the folks in line at your Target store. Now picture them naked. Now picture them naked and running for a tennis ball, their own balls flopping in the wind. Feeling sexy? Exactly.

Every nice weekend in the summer, my dad would load up the car with camping equipment and we'd be off to a campground in nearby Florida. It was run by a sweet old man named Uncle Davey who was also, incongruently, incredibly racist. And, if you must know, he had rather large testicles that were kind of a blueish hue.

My two sisters and I hated going. HATED it. And it wasn't because of our unfortunate kid's eye view of Uncle Davey's literally blue balls. Being nudists was the thing that made us different.  Made us weird. Made us wrong. "How was your weekend?" our neighbor Mrs. P would leeringly ask me when we got back. "Did y'all go camping?" She knew what she meant and I knew what she meant, but both of us were loathe to acknowledge it. "Yes," I would admit, mumbling. "Oh, reeeeeeally?" she would smirk triumphantly.

It was this sort of insinuating attitude about nudism that was what was so shameful about it to us. The actual nudism was no big deal. Really.

People find this really hard to believe. Even today, if I mention it to someone — I mean, people who know I write this blog, friends who know me well — they get that Mrs. P look on their faces. It's a mixture of judgey, sort of aroused, completely intrigued, yet put off at the same time.

"It's like a KOA, but everyone's naked," I say, lamely. They never believe me and press for more details. Because surely—surely!—there's more to it than that. But really that's it. Here's what people do at a nudist camp: swim, play old-school sports like horseshoes, ping pong or pool, sit around and play cards, sit in saunas or whirlpools, lie out in the sun, eat dinner and so on. All of this is done naked. Or naked but wearing the appropriate gear like tennis shoes. (If the idea of a bunch of your average Appleby's customers walking around naked isn't non-sexual enough, seeing those same folk naked but for a pair of socks and tennis shoes should do the trick.)

BTW, if you were wondering, the cliche about nudists and volleyball is totally true. Nudists love their volleyball — love it! Every camp has a court, no exceptions. Another nudist thing is the Importance of Towels. Nudists have an inordinate faith in the power of towels as all-purpose protectant. Every nudist carries a towel so that can put it between their sweaty naked ass and whatever surface they put said ass upon. The towel, you see, magically protects everyone from...well everything. I'm not sure why no one considers the "towel flipping factor," that is, once you re-use the towel, can you really be sure you're putting the butt side on your butt? Nonetheless, it seems to work. I don't know the science behind it, but to my knowledge, nudists don't suffer from any greater incident of butt-transmitted disease.

Because everyone is naked there probably are some things I've seen that most people haven't seen. I have seen flaccid penises covered in tanning oil (it was the '70s, remember). I have seen very obese men walking around naked, their genitalia tiny and cowering under the massive flap of their bellies. I have seen boobs hanging down to stomach level, all kinds of scars, varicose veins, sunburned boobs, flat wrinkly bums, prodigious bushes ('70s, ditto), and balls that hang down nearly to knee level. I have seen women walking around with a tampon string hanging out their wangs (the accepted nudist procedure, by the way, is for a menstruating woman to don a pair of underpants. Why they couldn't just tuck the string inside and try to "pass" as a non-menstruating woman remains unexplained to me. Perhaps many women of the day still had the whole belt and pad apparatus?)

What I did not see includes: orgies, sex of any kind, an erect penis. (As a child, I read a Q&A pamphlet for new nudists featuring naked cartoon "Love is..." looking folks. For the question "What if I get, you know, aroused?" naked cartoon man was advised to take a quick jump in the pool.)

When teenage nudist kids start rebelling against their parents they do so — seriously — by wearing clothes. Every nudist camp has kids in their awkward years Fighting the Power by wearing a long t-shirt or—fuck it! — even a full pants and shirt combo.

As I said, my sisters and I hated our nudist secret. It wasn't the actual nudism so much because, in truth that was kind of fun. Not the naked part, which we really didn't care one way or the other about, but going on adventures — running wild, exploring woods and creeks, water skiing, climbing trees and getting to play grown-up games like pool. Nudist camps are like a secret club. They are all over the country and—at least at the time — you had to know where they were (invariably down a long dirt road in the middle of nowhere), the secret code to unlock the gate or who to ask for at the intercom when you pulled up. When we pulled up to the gate at a new club, we'd ask for whoever — Martha, say — and Martha would come to the gate, bronzed, wrinkled and wearing only a terry cloth wrap around skirt.  The Marthas always seemed to smoke and had a vague white-trashiness about them. The Marthas always had the nicest mobile home in the place, but nudist camp nice, which is not really that nice.

For my sisters and I, it was the secret part that was so bad. We weren't supposed to tell anyone about it. Knowing that I had a thing about me that people couldn't know gave me a sense of shame that took years to shake. I thought if anyone ever knew this horrible nudist thing about me...well, that'd be about it. I, seriously, didn't even tell my husband until we'd been married several years. I still haven't told my children, or many of you guys. I don't think either of my sisters have told their husbands. (uh, til now. Sorry! Hope you enjoy your Big Talk tonight.)

It is not right to make children keep secrets and, well, let's just say that perhaps the situation could have been handled differently. Though I don't know how. There really was no good way to present the whole nudist family idea to my Georgia neighbors. And I still think there's something a little weird about needing to be naked in public, among other naked people. Couldn't people be just be fine walking around naked in their house without formalizing it, building camps, forming the ASA and whatnot? Was there something sexual about it that I wasn't getting?

That said, as an adult, I can see some of the advantages of the whole nothing-to-hide aspect of it all. I recently went to a Korean spa with my friend Janet. It was hardcore. Old Korean women were squatting down by these sort of low faucets scrubbing the bejesus out of their nether regions. (For a really long time too. They are either really really clean or there must be some sort of pleasure in taking to your crotch with a scrub brush that I'm not aware of.) Everyone was naked because you had to be — sign on the door said so. As I soaked with Janet in the hot tub (making, like, constant eye contact so I wouldn't appear to be staring at her boobs in an unseemly manner*), I looked around.

Everyone looked bad naked, and yet everyone looked good. That is to say, we all looked human. Clothes give the illusion that other people have perfect bodies and that, plus general media bombardment, etc... gives us the idea that most everyone else looks fucking amazing. Of course we "know" that's not true. We know models are genetic rarities, culled from millions of others, and that they are strategically posed, photoshopped, etc... But seeing these regular bodies made me really know it, in a deep way. The chick with the amazing boobs had a bit of a wide ass going on. The trim woman was also a bit gaunt. It was incredibly liberating to realize that we all looked...well, okay enough.

The other day I had the experience of being on the other side of the naked generational divide. I was pet sitting for friends who have a pool. I invited my husband and two daughters over to swim. When they got there, I shouted, "Woo! Let's go skinny dipping!" I peeled off my clothes and dove into the pool. When I surfaced, my three family members were staring at me in semi-horror. "Woo!" I said, again, defiantly. I swam around briefly, to prove my point that they were missing out — big time — but it was half-hearted. I felt foolish and suddenly way way too naked. Soon I climbed out and grabbed my towel. I was half-embarrassed, half-hating their prudery.

Despite that, at 47, I think I've pretty much come to peace with my supposedly sordid past. At least enough that I feel fine telling you, Dear Internet Stranger, and who knows who the hell you'll tell. The good part is that I don't really care any more.

In an interesting coda to all this: My nudist connection which had always been the Worst Thing of my Life also turned out to be one of the best things. When I was looking for an idea to pitch to Rolling Stone, my dad told me that a local nudist camp was hosting bands like Foreigner and Loverboy for a concert, a two-day Nudestock festival. This, anyone could see, was comedy gold. My piece on Nudestock (thank you to my RS editor, the amazing Jancee Dunn) was my first national story.

So what have we learned here? Here are your takeaways: Things are never all good or all bad, they just are. Keeping secrets = bad. Some men have really really long balls.

Now you know the worst.

*For the record, Janet has an incredible ass.

This post originally appeared on the blog In Bed With Married Women. Republished with permission. Before she got all smutty and started writing In Bed With Married Women, Jill Hamilton wrote for Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, Mad and Games magazine and heaps of other magazines, newspapers and an embarrassingly high number of boring reference books.

Image by Nymph/Shutterstock.

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Will This Woman Be the First Black African Woman to Reach the Top of Mt. Everest? [Video]

Even though a casual perusal of Billy Goat's Bluff Digest reveals that a whole lot of people seem to be scrambling to the top of Mt. Everest these days, climbing the tallest summit in the world is no easy feat, and certainly not something any Appalachian Trail hiker can accomplish. That's why if Helen Kinuthia successfully surmounts the mountain in 2014 as part of Expedition Everest, she would become the very first Kenyan ever to climb to the very top of the world.

According to some handy press materials, Expedition Everest is a New York-based initiative aimed at raising $500,000 for the Flying Kites Leadership Acadamey in Njambini, Kenya, an organization seeking "to raise the standards of care available to the world's poorest children" through education and advocacy. Kinuthia was selected for the 2014 climb from a pool of more than 150 certified adventurers after proving her mettle during an audition climb on Mt. Kenya, Africa's second-tallest mountain. When she was selected, Kinuthia explained how awesome it would feel to be not only to be the first Kenyan to the top of Everest, but the first black African woman to reach the top as well:

I am honored, excited and driven to represent my country atop Everest, especially for a campaign as important and meaningful as Expedition Everest. It is a true privilege to have the chance to climb for Kenya, and the opportunity to be the first black African woman on the summit.

Here's hoping John Cleese isn't in charge of the expedition — it'd be a shame to see Kinuthia and her imaginary twin tricked into a quixotic mission to build a bridge between the two peaks of Mt. Everest.

Expedition Everest

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World's First Weight Loss Perfume Smells Like Depressing Bullshit [Weighty Matters]

New fragrance Prends-Moi, which claims to be the world's first slimming perfume (but probably won't be the last, since we love spending money on bizarre weight loss scams), promises to "slim with pleasure" thanks to notes of caffeine, carnitine, and spirulina. Mmmmm.

From the Fragrance Shop website (which lists the perfume's "gender" as "female," because perfumes totally have genders and sellers obv think only women would be crazy enough to try and slim down via sniffing dietary supplements):

Designed to ‘slim with pleasure' PRENDS-MOI is based on extensive aromatherapeutic and ‘neurocosmetic' research and contains active ingredients including ‘Betaphroline' which when it comes in to contact with keratinocytes (cells found in the outer layer of the skin) will induce the release of B-endorphins present in the skin. A ‘pleasure message' is transmitted through the neurotransmitters (impulse from a nerve cell to another nerve, muscle, organ or other tissue) to the hippocampus (the ‘odour brain') triggering an immediate sensation of well being, a reduction in stress and an increase in contentment reducing the need to overeat and the scents slimming action is activated.

You're supposed to spray the perfume on in the morning and then whenever the need for snacking arises; apparently, "further results can be achieved by very lightly massaging into targeted areas, morning and night to help sculpt and slim the contours of the body." But get this: French lab BIO-EC ran a trial study that found 75% of non-dieting women ages 18-70 felt the perfume made them stop snacking. 73% also reported "pleasurable feelings." Unless the "targeted area" is the mouth and this perfume tastes like fancy cheese, we refuse to believe these findings and demand more information. Alternate theory: the perfume is actually crack.

It's on sale for £29.99, and apparently there are already 6,000 U.K. customers waiting to spray caffeine on their cellulite. We wish them the best of luck with that.

The world's first 'weight loss fragrance' revealed [Daily Mail via Refinery 29]

(Image via The Fragrance Shop.)

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Live Rabbits, Drag Queens and Stalkers: My Life as a Mary Kay Lady [First Person]

I joined the Mary Kay team in 1991, when I was 20 years old. I am from Dallas, home to the Mary Kay headquarters, so it was inevitable that I would run into a Sales Consultant sooner or later.

I was working as a part-time teller, going to college, and barely making ends meet. So, when my coworker and I were invited to a free glamour shots photo session (remember, this was 1991—Glamour Shots were aspirational then), we jumped at it. It turned out to be a Mary Kay party/sales meeting for new consultants.

The Sales Director who was having the party, and we'll just call her Marykay for our purposes, did half our faces and had us do the other half. Then, while her new consultants were meeting, Marykay sent us into the next room where a guy with a camera, a graduation drape, and a black background was waiting. My mother still has the picture hanging in her living room. Me, in a soft focus headshot, half my face impeccable, the other half...well. Thank god for soft focus, and the shimmer of the dainty, pink lipstick Marykay had chosen for me.

Marykay was a petite, birdlike woman whose powers of persuasion were enough to sway skeptical me, and I bought into the lure of easy money hook, line, and sinker. She told my coworker and me her own rags to riches tale, which included how she had kept her family afloat during her husband's layoff. She talked about financial freedom, economic success, and then showed us her newly earned pink Cadillac. I was sold, and I was going to sell Mary Kay cosmetics to all my Goth and Grunge friends, and I was going to make a killing.

I borrowed start-up money from my mother to buy into the line. Marykay had convinced me that even though I could start with samples, I needed to really have product. She wanted me to get into it for $1200, but the thought of that made me sick, so I went in at mid-level. It was around $500 at the time.

I threw myself into the work. I did actually do fairly well with sales. I was able to cover the costs of my products and supplies, and have profit to put into the bank. I wasn't making a great deal of money, but I would say I was on my way to it. However, I wasn't interested in building my down-line. Sales Directors make money in levels. They aren't promoted by the amount of product they sell, but by the number of Sales Consultants listed in their down-line. Every tier of Sales Consultants means more money for the Director. Since I wasn't interested in anything other than making money from my own work, Marykay wasn't happy with me. My sales didn't do as much for her as me building my down-line would. She turned from sweet cheerleader into a shrill harpy, and would call me constantly, demanding that I bring in new consultants.

That was bad, but not bad enough to drive me off from the opportunities I was seeing. Two things finally happened that disenchanted me entirely.

First, I had busted my butt to win a contest Marykay had been promoting for a month. The consultant to book and deliver the most parties (you'd be surprised how many people book and cancel), and the consultant to sell the most product would both win "gorgeous prizes", and if the same consultant won both, they would win "a gorgeous fur piece." The Mary Kay company is known for giving nice gifts to consultants, so it wasn't out of line to expect that winning this contest would mean a lucrative prize. My intention was to win, get the fur, sell it and buy my books for the next semester. I had hoped that this would give me some breathing room financially, and put me in position to stop living paycheck to paycheck.

I did win both contests (by booking parties at college dorms and sorority houses), went to the big party to celebrate and got my "fur piece". It was a live rabbit. This woman was giving away animals. It probably seems silly that I was upset about that, and not about the idea of being given a fur, but I was horrified that she thought a living animal was a good prize, and she was giving away a living thing like it was a keychain, not caring whether or not the thing would be in good hands. When I left the party with my rabbit, I saw her kids sobbing in another room. The next time we spoke, Marykay told me that the rabbit had been their pet, and she would take it back off my hands if I didn't want it. I kept him.

Second, I had found a niche market of people who loved me, loved my product, and would have bought from me forever. Drag Queens. Do you know what Marykay and God did not love? Drag Queens. I found this out when, at a meeting, Marykay asked how I was blowing through so much product. I happily talked about my best clients, what they liked in the skin care lines, and what they loved in the spackle-like cosmetics, and where I had met them—J.R.'s in Oak Lawn. After the meeting, Marykay pulled me aside and told me that Mary Kay did not associate itself with "those people", and told me I could be dismissed as a consultant for being in gay bars.

So, there I was with a rabbit (named Simon LeBun, who had just eaten my art portfolio—he lived for 5 years), and the command to drop my best clients for moral reasons that had nothing to do with my own value system. I quit Mary Kay instead. Marykay bothered me for quite a while, insisting that I give her back all the tokens I had earned (several pieces of gold jewelry and a couple of gems—I did not, I had earned them) and did her best to browbeat me about my lack of character, what a disappointment I was, etc.

I ended up losing money out of my own stupidity, quitting before I sold out my product, not having read my contract regarding being unable to sell back product if you quit a certain way—I can't blame Mary Kay for that. I hated the faux feminism—Rules and Righteousness for women to follow in order to please their men, while bringing home the bacon. I hated the faux cheer. I hated the meetings. I liked the money. I liked a lot of the products. I liked doing parties and selling the products. I loved my Queens and learned a lot from them.

I was pursued by two other sales directors for literal years of my life. I had sold well enough that they knew of me, and wanted me in their down-lines. I just had to keep my clientele on the down-low. I could not make them stop calling! You aren't supposed to be able to buy back in to the company if you quit on it the way I did, but these two directors had figured out ways to sneak me back in, even though I had said I wasn't interested. It took changing my phone number for them to quit calling. Never give a Pink Lady your phone number.

Lane has had more careers than Alexis Morrell Carrington Colby Dexter Rowan has has weddings, but fancies herself a writer above all—otherwise, that degree in English was flat useless.

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Men Too Busy Saving Their Own Asses to Let Women and Children Go First [Chivalry Is Dead]

When a gunman opened fire on an Aurora, Colorado movie theater earlier this month, three men died protecting their girlfriends, while another ran from the theater, got in his truck, and drove away, saying later that he "went to get help." The media (us included) heaped praise on the the dead men, extolling them as examples of how a guy should behave in the face of tragedy. But according to a new study, men who face disaster by taking care of the needs of others aren't the norm — in fact, throughout the last 160 years or so, it seems that many, many more men are in the "get in the truck and get the hell out of dodge" category than those who would take the bullet. Women and children first? More like looking out for number one.

A new study of shipwrecks dating back to 1850 has shown that not only has the "women and children first" mantra fallen out of favor, it probably was never in favor in the first place, or if it was in favor, it was in favor for, like, a second. A pair of Swedish economists examined the survival records of 18 disasters and found that women and children are actually less likely to survive disasters than men, and the people most likely to survive are the people who are, according to chivalrous rules, supposed to go down with the ship: the crew. While 61% of the crew and 37% of men typically survived shipwrecks, only 27% of women did, and only 17% of children made it.

According to the LA Times, the initial reasoning behind letting women and children access lifeboats before men was that men ostensibly had a "survival advantage;" they tend to be more physically hardy and stronger, and crew members should have a familiarity with the vessel and the water that would allow them a greater chance of survival without lifeboats. Therefore theoretically, men giving women and children access to help first would increase the overall survival rate in maritime disasters. In Role/Reboot today, Hugo Schwyzer points out that on a more philosophical level, handing one's survival advantage over to women is only fair, given that, until very recently, every time a woman has had sex with a man, she's put herself at risk of pregnancy, and, by extension at risk of dying during childbirth.

Not every seafaring disaster resulted in men scrambling to save their own asses at the expense of the younger and physically weaker. "Women and children first" was coined during an 1852 disaster involving the British ship the Birkenhead. When the boat hit a rock in shark-heavy waters, the men dutifully loaded women and children onto the lifeboats and stood on the deck as the vessel sank. During the Titanic disaster in 1912, crew members made sure that women were allowed the ship's limited lifeboats. Additionally, Leonardo DiCaprio floated there shivering to death in the water like a chivalrous idiot while Kate Winslet hogged an entire piece of floating jetsam that they totally could have shared.

But all human beings are wild-eyed, limb-chewing forest creatures when faced with the possibility of imminent death, and even though it's unpleasant to think about, it makes sense that when animal instincts take over, a guy may feel compelled to shove a kid down some stairs so he can get one of the last remaining life vests. The Swedish researchers behind the analysis call this "every man for himself." I call it a proto-Ayn Randian paradise. Ron Paul for President!

[LAT]

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First Indian Woman to Pose for Playboy Calls It an International Accomplishment [Playboy]

Bollywood actress Sherlyn Chopra will appear nude in the November issue of Playboy, making her the first Indian woman to do so. Although Playboy is banned in India, Chopra was the one to approach the publication, according to the BBC:

She revealed that she had written to Playboy expressing an interest in posing - and the magazine got back to her "within three to four days".

Chopra is basically a B-list actress in India; the Hindustan Times describes her career as consisting of "blink-and-miss performance in about ten films." In many of the roles, she played the seductress — "plunging necklines, tight skirts and bikinis." She's recorded three albums, and her image is consistently sexy. She had a single called "Outrageous," in which she purred about her hips and her "joy ride," she posed in a bikini for PETA, and, according to the Hindustan Times,

Her skin show, ready-to-pounce sex appeal, raunchy lovemaking scenes made her the 'bold' actor with a hot body and a loud mouth.

She has been non-chalant about her sexuality and its expression.

But playboy will be calling Chopra a "Bollywood legend" and playing up the fact this photoshoot is "historic."

Chopra says, "It is not an easy task to be nude in front of the camera and look good at the same time," and calls the shoot an "international accomplishment."

Not everyone agrees, of course. It can be argued that stripping naked at Hugh Hefner's house is a dubious achievement. Some on Twitter are calling it demeaning and repulsive. A commenter on the Hindustan Times site accused her of having "mental illness"; another declared: "now she is public property and will do anthing for money." One critic, Gayatri Sankar, writes: "At a time when innocent women across the nation from Gujarat to Guwahati have been subjected to sexual abuse and humiliation, one wonders if Sherlyn Chopra's pictures wound a woman's integrity."

Two things are clear: by taking her clothes off, Chopra went from being marginally famous to gaining international attention. And no matter what people think about her posing nude, she believes that it was liberating. "I had fun meeting [Hugh Hefner] and his girlfriends. I am thinking of making him my idol because he lives his life on his terms and conditions. I also live my life on my terms and conditions," Chopra told BBC News. Chopra adds: "I did not sleep with Mr Hefner. No one at the [Playboy] mansion has till date made an indecent proposal to me. I love my naked skin. Felt quite comfortable displaying my nakedness … that is all." And she recently tweeted:

Thanks 2 all those who have applauded my choice 2 b free-spirited n 2 do with my life what I please 2 do.I'm answerable 2 no one but myself.

Sherlyn Chopra, Bollywood Actress, To Be Playboy's 1st Indian Model (PHOTOS) [HuffPo]
Bollywood's Sherlyn Chopra says Playboy shoot 'not easy' [BBC News India]
Bollywood bombshell Sherlyn Chopra making history as the first Indian woman to grace the pages of Playboy [NYDN]
Naked truths about Sherlyn Chopra [Hindustan Times]
Sherlyn Chopra [Playboy]

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First Lady Pep Talks Are the Best Pep Talks [Snap Judgment]

Jul 29, 2012 5:00 PM  

LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 29: First Lady Michelle Obama talks with Kobe Bryant after the Men's Basketball Game between the United States and France on Day 2 of the London 2012 Olympic Games on July 29, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

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Confessions of a Sometimes-Booth Babe [First Person]

When my tradeshow agent unexpectedly calls to say, "Hey, I've got some fun news!", being stuffed into a skimpy racecar driver costume isn't exactly what I have in mind. It's 7:30 a.m. on the second day of E3, the biggest gaming expo in the country, and I'm still reeling from a curling iron burn when the phone rings. Most mornings, I roll out of bed and start working on copywriting assignments in my pajamas, or tinker with my TV pilot script over oatmeal and coffee. Today is a little different.

"Make sure your hair is big," she says. "Like, as big as you can. Make your makeup more dramatic. Red lipstick. False eyelashes."

"Does this mean I can't wear flats today?"

"Black knee-high boots or high heels."

"Hrm."

Despite the fact that it's my fourth year staffing at E3, this is the first time I've been asked to don a costume. Up until now, the tradeshow gods have mostly been kind, putting me in polos and modest black skirts or company t-shirts and pants. Though once, I was literally locked and tethered to a Nintendo 3DS for the duration of the show, presumably so no one could sneak off with the recently unveiled handheld console (bathroom breaks were a pain that year). This year, I'm hawking a gaming tournament whose first prize is a souped-up car.

Such are the workplace hazards of being a "booth babe."

Booth babes, generally, get a bad rap. We're allegedly vacuous airheads, pretty faces who don't know anything about anything. I understand the criticism surrounding the job – I'm well aware that to some extent, we are willing participants in the commodification of the female body. We're using physical attractiveness to shill a product in an overt way. Many of us have only a passing interest in gaming and geekery.

But what I don't get is the vitriol. No one rips on Sofia Vergara for starring in Pepsi commercials (what does she know about quality caffeinated soft drinks?!) or complains that the Old Spice Guy is unnecessarily naked (how dare he pander to women with his shirtlessness?!). That companies use sex to reel in eyeballs is a marketing tactic as old as time, ranging from the fashion industry to pharmaceuticals.

My husband has to drive me to the LA Convention Center because I've missed my bus, due to total ineptitude applying false eyelashes for the first time that results in me being covered in tiny lash fragments. When I arrive at the West Hall, the before-hours buzz is already high, a cacophony of competing lights and sounds that could give Vegas a run for its money. My agent hands me the costume, a standard Halloween racecar driver number that isn't particularly scandalous after all, and I meet my booth partner, an Asian American model/actress with a surprising droll streak. Behind us sit a few game demos and a swanky black-and-white Scion.

Regardless of what some folks like to think, this kind of work does not "satisfy [our] hollow egos." Trust me. Murdering my feet in five-inch heels while handing out flyers or shepherding demo lines isn't a Tony Robbins seminar, it's a job. Being subject to lewd come-ons and the occasional groping isn't an ego boost, it's offensive. The depressing truth is that standing around in a costume at a convention pays far better than writing ever has. For many of us, it supplements other career goals.

While the bulk of booth babes may be actors and models, some of them are also budding video game developers, graphic designers, and gamers who leap at the chance to attend this media- and trade-only event – and get paid, no less. Seriously, who wouldn't want to get paid to attend awesome cons like E3 or Comic-Con? (Snoozefest medical conventions are another story.) Almost none of them are "beauty-obsessed, frustrated wannabe models who can't get work."

My own gaming credentials are pretty weak. I spent grade school summers playing MUDs and Pokémon, and several high school summers cooped up with Tekken and Final Fantasy. These days it's nothing more than a bit of DDR and Wii Mario Kart on game nights. And my geek streak runs fairly mellow – when I worked at Comic-Con, I cosplayed during my lunch hour, but it's not a regular thing. (I just have particular love for Boomer and Katniss.) By no means do I pretend to be a dedicated nerd of any kind.

Some attendees, however, love to play Stump The Booth Babe. It's an exquisite little game designed to expose the pretty posers who dare to take a job working at a gaming expo, and to test their knowledge beyond release dates and console compatibility. These guys would first like to assess your entire history with gaming before deeming whether you're fit to stand outside of a booth in short shorts. They're in the minority, but they're a bunch of jackholes.

My little racecar outfit elicits more photo-ops than quizzes, though. Any apprehension I have about playing the part of traditional booth babe, stilettos and all, is quickly dissipated. Most people just want a picture, not public humiliation. Interestingly, many of the women are more enthusiastic than the guys about taking a picture with us, like we're dotty Captain Jack Sparrow or SpongeBob impersonators on Hollywood Boulevard.

I like to think that most con attendees are in on the joke, so to speak. I like to think that they see booth babes more as sideshow entertainment than "an unnecessary anachronism," and realize that we take the whole enterprise about as seriously as they do (which is to say, not at all). Much like racing mascots at a baseball game, it's all a bit of fun and entertainment, but it's not actual sport. Just because I'm dressed like a giant hotdog doesn't mean I think I really am a giant hotdog.

And though I once would've hated to admit it, I've learned a lot from my time as a booth babe. I've learned a lot about gaming. I've set aside my own condescending misconceptions about models and tradeshow modeling. I'm ever-so-slightly better at public speaking and being put on the spot – my first media interview a few years ago was mortifyingly deer-in-the-headlights and therefore immortalized on the interwebs forever; this time around I managed to utter a few words of college-French to a European media outlet. And it's proven to be great writing fodder – I recently finished a Rizzoli & Isles spec script that centers on a booth babe who is found dead at a video game convention.

That we have recurring conversations about the necessity or frivolity of booth babes is a silly attempt at misdirection. Maybe those who frown upon slutty-looking costumes should petition game developers to stop designing slutty-looking video game characters. Maybe cons should feature more booth beefcakes, to round out the crowd. And then maybe we could enjoy booth babes as much as we enjoy a good pierogi-and-hotdog mascot race.

Elaine Low is an aspiring TV writer in Los Angeles. When not writing, she teaches English at a video game company, auditions for commercials, and tries to stop her puppy from eating her socks.

Image via Franco Pop Culture Geek/Flickr.

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My first social media fame and how you can profit from it

My recent post on 12 WordPress Editors that you can choose over the default WYSIWYG editor was one of the posts that took me the longest to write, simply because it involved quite a bit of research. I would have to thank Monika for recommending Windows Live Writer to me, that got me wondering if there were other editors too – which culminated in the post. It all began with Maki submitting the post to Sphinn. The rest, as they say, is history.

How it Happened

When the post went live, it was barely noticed – I was quite surprised that it didn’t elicit a single comment even from my “Active Readers”. Admittedly, I was disappointed since the post had taken the longest time and most effort to come up with and to see it looking forlorn made me wonder if the post was not written effectively enough. I was tempted to submit the post to StumbleUpon, note that I’m fairly new to StumbleUpon and have only stumbled a modest number of sites. In keeping with that, my stumble brought in only a trickle of visitors that didn’t help much in increasing the activity.

I almost let it go the next day and was brain-storming for my next post when I noticed a link in my Dashboard from Sphinn. I was pleasantly surprised since trying out Sphinn was something I had been putting on the backburner for quite sometime now. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw not one, but ten Sphinns for the same post I had almost given up on – almost. I needed no further encouragement to sign up and thank those who had Sphunn the story, and especially to Maki, who had submitted it. How he came across the post is beyond me, I do hope he’s reading this post from his RSS reader!

What followed is what Steven describes as a Domino Effect of Traffic. He explains how second tier social media sites like DZone, CSS Globe and Sphinn can be used as stepping stones for succeeding with bigger sites like Digg, Del.icio.us and Stumbleupon. In my case, what happened was, when Maki submitted the post to Sphinn, it brought along a few targeted visitors who also happened to have a power profile on StumbleUpon. Thus, when members from Sphinn found the post useful, they Sphunn it and Stumbled it. This set the domino effect into motion.

When the post hit the front page of Sphinn, it brought in a handful of unique visitors, some of who also Stumbled the post, which eventually resulted in a huge traffic from StumbleUpon – the post is still listed on the StumbleUpon Buzz page.

Digg killed my traffic

After the first day of traffic from StumbleUpon, I decided to experiment with a Digg button to encourage visitors to Digg the post and in turn, increase the traffic further. Without a lot of fan-fare, I stuck a Digg button to the post and sat back, expecting visitors from Digg to kill my server. What happened in reality though, both surprised and intrigued me – the traffic from StumbleUpon started drying up! Visitors from StumbleUpon were no longer thumbing up the post which meant that the rate at which newer visitors would come, was reduced.

I wondered if it was because the StumbleUpon effect wasn’t big enough and it was dying out after a day in a natural process. Since there wasn’t a lot of traffic anymore, I also removed the Digg button since the post had only received a grand total of 4 Diggs. I let it stay this way for a while and was pleasantly surprised to find that the post started attracting traffic again, the very same day! I attributed this to the wide vagaries of the Blogosphere and reckoned that it was just a one-off incident.

A few hours before removing the Digg button, I’d sent a few shouts to my friends on Digg to which Karen and Edgewhere kindly obliged, bringing the total to 6 Diggs. Karen also left a nice comment saying that she’d Dugg the article. On a whim, I put the Digg button back and waited yet again for the “dreaded” Digg effect – in vain. Instead, my StumbleUpon traffic began to dwindle. It didn’t take me long to put one slump in traffic and another slump in traffic together to realize that the Digg button was actually what was killing my traffic.

What could have happened was, when the visitors from StumbleUpon arrived, they saw a prominent Digg button displaying a total of 6 Diggs for the article, which is rather abysmal by any standards, effectively, impressing upon them that this was an article that hadn’t received many votes and may not be of interest to them. Thus, they would just Stumble away. This is purely hypothetical of course, but it seems to best explain the “W” in the graph. So much for the Digg effect. What you could do better, after learning from my experience of losing four days of traffic could be to use a Digg It! button that doesn’t show the Digg count, until it is up to a respectable number. I had to learn the hard way that perception is very much the reality – hopefully you’ve had it easy.

Recipe for Success

1. Do a bit of market research and determine what other people in your niche are looking for. I addressed a concern that a lot of people had – Monika was the first to suggest it to me, I soon realized that there were a few other bloggers who were also using third-party editors and many more who weren’t aware of it, like me. This created the perfect situation for the post.


2. Try to make the list as comprehensive as possible. Most people are busy and would like to see concise descriptions of all available options. Of course, it may not be possible to cover them all, but if you account for the majority, it will certainly help. A list with many items seems to do the best with Social Media – its just too irresistible to see all the resources on one page and will tempt them to bookmark/promote it.


3. Social Media helps a lot in bringing in traffic – its one medium that doesn’t distinguish between an established blog and a newer one. Bring it on your side by displaying appropriate buttons prominently that entice readers to click. Hiding the Digg/Del.icio.us count initially, until it reaches a respectable number seems to help as seen from my experience.


4. Use second tier social media sites effectively. Submit your post to as many of the smaller sites as you can at the same time – Digg, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon all factor in the time that an article becomes popular.


5. Its natural that a percentage of readers would spill over and click through to other posts on your blog – help them find your best articles by listing them right below the post. The articles listed just under my post marked as “You may also like reading” which are effectively from the Related Posts plugin, received the most hits. Unfortunately for me, not all of them were my best ones. I’m sure I would have got a better response had I placed similar articles that are also my best ones. Don’t rely on the plugin to do it for you – hand-pick them yourself for the best results.


6. Don’t kill the effect by displaying ads that are more prominent than the article itself – it reflects badly on the blog and personally, I’d just move on. Although you may be tempted to make a quick buck, hold onto the temptation and you are sure to reap better benefits later.


7. If you think your post is really good and that it could use just the slightest bit of promotion, you could ask your closest friends to help you out. But be careful not to spam them with posts everyday – that just reduces your chances when you’ve really got a best-selling post. It really is a no-brainer, but be sure to return the favour if they need some help too.


8. Remember to thank those who promote your article by sending a mail or adding them as a friend or anything else that you’re comfortable doing – so long as they know you appreciate their gesture.

The Result

The post has already got almost five times the traffic that the whole blog got in the past month. More importantly, the subscriber count has doubled in as many days and I’m still counting. (If you were one of the people who Stumbled/Bookmarked on Del.icio.us/Sphunn the post and are reading this one by RSS, this is to say – thank you!)

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