Sometimes, when things arent working, you just need to go in a different direction

Whatever way you look at it, ITVs documentary following the Duke and Duchess of Sussex around Africa, perhaps intended as a puff piece damage limitation after months of negative press has had the opposite effect to what was intended.

Instead of discussions about the human side of the couple in any positive light, or their causes and the movements they champion, two things have come away from the hour long documentary that Meghan feels coverage of her is unfair, and Harry wants to leave the UK and head to Africa full time. The image that came across was less of a well-meaning couple misunderstood and wanting...

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For their own sake, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex need to decide whether they are cut out for Royalty - Telegraph.co.uk

Classes dont start until Monday, but Tom Golden, 18, 20G, plays professor as he shows slides to a room of 35 first-year students.

Hes leading a 90-minute sexual misconduct and education training, the first of four sessions he will facilitate during first-year orientation on a Saturday in late August.

Golden is the graduate assistant for Break the Silence, an organization housed in Lehighs Office of Gender Violence Education and Support, which aims to provide students resources and healthy sexual education. Before he took the graduate assistant position, Golden belonged to the group as an undergraduate.

Golden cant remember exactly why he joined Break the Silence, but he does remember the burlesque troupe that came to campus for part of the organizations Five Senses of Consent event. He remembers the sex toys explored in the groups Sex Toys and BDSM programming. He remembers watching Break the Silence modernize its presentations to become more inclusive.

Now, as a graduate assistant, he offers guidance as Break the Silence undergraduates take charge of the programming plans.

Break the Silence doesnt have an executive board leadership flows through a committee-based, fountain model, in which some people will execute specific projects and events and the rest of the group pools its support.

Brooke DeSipio, Break the Silences adviser and the director of Gender Violence Education and Support, said the model allows members to take a step back if they need to while still participating in the organization.

I cant imagine not having a peer support group on campus, DeSipio said. I think a lot of students would not get the help they need.

She said Break the Silence members are trained on sexual misconduct resources and reporting options because their peers will often come to them for help. Break the Silence members are mandated reporters, so they are not a confidential resource.

DeSipio said students are more likely to tell a friend or Break the Silence member about their experiences than they are to tell a faculty member, staff member or official reporting option.

Caralyn Roeper, 21, believes she receives more questions about sexual education and misconduct than she would if she werent involved in Break the Silence.

She also said a few students called her this summer to ask for her help.

(I was called about) whats going on with a relationship, or like, This just happened to one of my friends who is at Lehigh over the summer, which is really cool that you become a resource for people, she said.

Roeper stressed how important it is for students to have a space on campus to talk about sexual assault, relationship abuse and sex education issues.

Sometimes, however, Break the Silence members have to initiate the conversation.

DeSipio said it takes a lot of self-awareness, self-reflection and identity development to be able to lead discussions on campus.

Its not easy to spend your time talking about sexual assault and relationship abuse and sex on campus, she said.

Break the Silence members can succeed by playing their cards correctly.And one of their cards says pornography.

Wascar Ramirez, 20, said first-year students shuffle across the Maginnes Hall rooms during orientation to arrange cards with different potentially toxic behaviors onto the Continuum of Harm. They must decide if behaviors are really bad, kind of bad or not so bad, and then the group discusses the decisions.

Ramirez, who is now in his fifth year as a member of Break the Silence, said many of the cards are written ambiguously to prompt better discussion.

(Pornography), on one hand, can be good because of self release, masturbation, Ramirez said. But on the other hand, a lot of mainstream porn doesnt show any consent, so it has all of those downstream negative effects.

Though Break the Silence can achieve transparency with students with its programming and education, Roeper said sometimes the university isnt as transparent with students. Because it is a business, it could potentially hurt Lehigh to release negative information about its students, faculty and staff, but Roeper thinks sharing reports of sexual harassment and assault doesnt reflect poorly on the university.

Sexual assault is a national issue, so Roeper thinks instances of sexual misconduct reveal more about the larger culture thats been created rather than individual institutions.

Sometimes its definitely discouraging being here and being a member of this organization as a part of Lehigh, she said, But its also reassuring that since our program started, weve made a lot of progress.

Break the Silence has made progress beyond the perimeters of Lehighs campus. Roeper said members advised Moravian College students in developing and running a program similar to Lehighs, because the college didnt have one in place.

Golden said the group has improved its education and outreach. And student reception has improved as a result.

He said this is the first year that a lot of Break the Silence members have had first-year students they trained during orientation approach them days and weeks after the session to chat and thank them.

I had one of my students (from orientation) say to me, I had sex this weekend and I used consent like you said, and she gave me a fist bump, Golden said. And that, like, never happened before.

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Break the Silence extends education, resources to students - The Brown and White

British artist Emma Witter uses a very different kind of medium. She collects and breathes new life into animal bones to create intricate sculptures of flowers, leaves and other natural objects.

Based in London, originally from Hertfordshire, she has just enjoyed a twelve-month residency at the prestigious Sarabande the organisation founded by fashion designer Lee Alexander McQueen CBE in 2007. Her botanical forms are symbolic and emotionally loaded, and she hopes to dispel the macabre association of bones and instead highlight the lightness and beauty of the material.

With heavy references to 16th and 17th century Dutch and Flemish painters who used the flower as a symbol of life and its fragility, the delicateness and beauty of Witter's sculptures has won her numerous awards and global attention. We spoke to Witter about this and more.

I just think theyre such beautiful objects. I love the gently curved forms, the symmetry, how they are so lightweight and yet immensely strong. I remember first having oxtail stew where the bones were whole, and marvelling at their beautiful, floral shape.

Theyre very much like orchids. I felt uneasy throwing these objects in the bin and started to keep hold of them, researching how to preserve them. They are so widely available as a byproduct, and I think a surprising and overlooked material resource for sculpture.

I feel very inspired by artists and designers who are really dedicated to their materials. Im quite obsessed at the moment with Fernando Laposse and how he is breaking down the fibres from different plants, like Cacti and corn husks, and creating new woven textures to be used for design objects. Grant Gibson presents a really good podcast called Material Matters where he interviews makers who are obsessive about a particular material.

Im inspired by science and nature and recently discovered the Linnean Society in Mayfair where you can book to go and look through the most beautiful old books of botanical illustrations. Im interested in London history and food history. I love the imagery of historical feasts and the theatrical presentation of food.

I collect bones over some time, from my cooking, dinners with friends, from visiting butchers and collecting kitchen waste from my chef friends like Mark Hix and Martin Sweeney at Petersham Nurseries. I boil the bones, scrub them clean and then leave them in bleach overnight. After drying them out, I categorise them into their 'families' of shapes before I start to play around with how the forms can gently interact with each other.

The process of preparing the material is very time-consuming and has become very ritualistic to me. I like the idea of salvaging this overlooked material to create something beautiful and lasting. Im often working on several experiments and pieces at a time. My studio is full of boxes of different categorised bones, tests and failures. Im trying all the time to marry the objects in a way that looks light, peaceful and elegant.

Ha! They thought it was a bit weird at first, and then just accepted me for who I am! Theyre all used to the bones, and know the drill at the end of dinner parties to pass them down for me, and hold onto their turkey carcasses after Christmas!

Its hard to say, as I think most children are creative. In that, they explore things freely and with gay abandon which of course as adults we now envy. As artists, we now strive to replicate the act of creating, without a crippling sense of self-awareness. As a child, I was very interested in nature and obsessively collected little objects. Every day before school, I would get up at 5am to enjoy a couple of hours of alone time in the garden. My dad would find me sitting outside, wholly immersed, testing the different densities of rocks, breaking them down with a hammer. I was unique!

I would have treasure boxes of things like snail shells and unique stones and would present these boxes selectively to only my most favourite of adults.

I studied Performance Design at Central Saint Martins and was interested in scenography. I didnt have any technical skills so leaned towards being inventive with unusual materials for example, I made costumes for a collaboration with the Rambert School of Dance, all from woven hair. I spent a lot of my student loan in Paks! I stuffed the dancers' little ballet bodices with padding to accentuate their bodies and then sewed on layers and layers of these lengths of hair, so it swooshed around with their movements.

For my final major project, I produced an immersive performance based around food and dining, where I particularly enjoyed the prop making of these weird imaginary 'meals', using food matter but in strange ways.

After I graduated, UAL funded me to set up my studio practice, and I explored this idea of food sculpture. This then fell into areas of both set design/prop making and sculpture as I started working commercially and also exhibiting.

It was amazing to be selected and feel a part of something so special. Especially as one of my best buddies Jonah Pontzer, who is an amazing painter, was also selected and we were put in the same studio. We shared one together a couple of years back and really missed it so it was extra special for us to be reunited! I met really amazing people, and it was a great platform for me to hold my solo exhibition. It all really just went by in a snap!

The people! 100% I think we all say the same thing. I met some amazingly talented, really special people Im so happy to have made friends with.

I think its important to align yourself with people or places that youre interested in...and I think when Ive been more genuine in what Im making it goes down better. Rather than trying to play it safe or thinking too much about being commercial.

Give it your absolute everything. I also think its really important to talk and have a peer group, go out and look at loads of shows, talk to the artists, be active. It really helps to share ideas and developments with other creative people and not be trapped in solitary confinement in your studio.

During London Design Festival, I saw Dan Tobin Smiths VOID installation at Collins Music Hall which blurred boundaries between nature and design. He filmed beautifully the inside of rare gemstones and then had them projected on a large scale to create an immersive space. I wanted to live in it.

You can see Emma Witter's work in a group exhibition called Chroma, which runs until 11 November in a gallery underneath the Catherine Provost store at 127 Sloane Street, London. Witter will also be featured in Blue, another group show at Andrea Hamilton Studios in Kinnerton Street, featuring 32 artists who share a passion for the sea.

Find out more about Emma Witter at http://www.emmawitter.co.uk.

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Emma Witter on why she turns discarded animal bones into intricate botanical sculptures - Creative Boom

The sequel ten years in the making features on-brand humor and over-the-top zombie kills

Full of self-awareness and gruesome-yet-satisfying zombie kills, 2019s Zombieland: Double Tap is a solid film that recaptures the charm of its predecessor.

A decade after 2009s hit horror-comedy Zombieland earned over $100 million box office worldwide on a budget of $23 million, director Ruben Fleischers sequel saw a wide release on Oct. 18, 2019, just in time for Halloween.

Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin each reprise their roles as Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock respectively. Joining the cast are Rosario Dawson as Nevada, Zoey Deutch as Madison and Luke Wilson as Albuquerque.

Double Tap opens with voiceover exposition, delivered by Eisenberg, feeding the audience information about the worlds developments over the past ten years. We learn of new developments with the group, including their recent coup in the White House. We are also introduced to the worlds new breeds of zombies: Homers, Hawkings and T-800s.

The original cast maintains the chemistry it established in the original, with significant plot lines developing the relationship between Columbus and Wichita, as well as Tallahassee and Little Rock.

The casts R-rated banter contribute to most of the films excellent scenes. The originals brand of humor established it as a cult classic comedy, and Zombieland: Double Tap does not miss a beat.

The film, although suffering from a few tropes and a thin plot, excels in every area one would expect: gory zombie kills, heartfelt family dynamics and satisfying character development.

In a sequel, callbacks and fanservice are expected. Double Tap features a handful of callbacks to iconic parts of the original. Columbus survival rules are expanded upon, and Tallahassee utters a catchphrase that is quickly mocked as outdated.

Double Tap takes a swipe at The Walking Dead early in the movie, and it lands well. Although, it is hard to ignore the cultural zeitgeist of zombies is seemingly on its way out.

One of the only negative aspects about Double Tap was its use of Zoey Deutchs character. Deutch stars as Madison, and uses a dated dumb blonde trope that feels grating very quickly. Deutchs performance is hilarious, but her characters trope seems more suited to a film from early 2010.

Zombieland: Double Tap is not a perfect film, but ultimately a satisfying sequel for fans of the original. It renews the charm and unique humor of its predecessor while giving its beloved charactersand their post-apocalyptic worldmeaningful development.

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Zombieland: Double Tap is equal parts enjoyable and endearing - IU Southeast Horizon

NewsBusiness

Creating the right working environment will pay off, finds Cherry Martin

While we live in times far removed from the cringe-worthy antics in offices and boardrooms of yesteryear, workplace culture is much more than a few millennials demanding better conditions and benefits at work. Staff have been campaigning for these rights for years and its not just about having a football table gathering dust.

The good news is that staff nowadays are more confident in demanding help from their bosses and within our contenders for the awards this year, we have a mix of new founders of companies being passionate about culture in the workplace, as well as established companies that have examined and refined theirs.

Any companys number one asset is its team, and here we highlight some of the best. If culture is seriously lacking where you work, maybe leave this page open on the relevant persons desk

Health is wealth

Healthy Performance measures feedback data daily to measure overall wellness and training needs.

As an organisation with performance in their bloodstream, they invest heavily in technology, the infrastructure of which crucially reduces pressure on their growing team. These bespoke systems include an operational management system, CRM, health screening software, plus online booking system, lifestyle assessment and mental health support tool.

One initiative to be applauded is their attitude towards exercise; allowing their team to take exercise during working hours, plus allowing them access to all of the wellbeing resources that they offer to clients.

A willingness to take increased ownership and responsibility for fulfilment

Finding, keeping and growing teams within fledgling businesses scaling at a rapid rate is an artform in itself, which is why SME of the Year contender Jigsaw Solutions brought HR consultant Anna Farrow in to support them in their period of growth. Anna implemented the Happiness at Work programme, which works by each employee following a series of five minute exercises in happiness and self exploration a day, and charting them in a happiness journal.

The success of her influence led Jigsaw to employ her on a full-time basis. Anna said: By supporting personal growth through increased self-awareness, we can create a better version of ourselves each and every day, which of course makes for improved engagement, fulfilment and ultimately performance.

There were no signs that the team were unhappy, but ethically it was and remains the right thing to do to challenge their current state, and ensure their happiness as a certainty.

Simply announcing Happiness At Work sent a very powerful message to our team, making it clear their happiness, fulfilment and wellbeing mattered. The six-week initial programme allowed us to bring together members of the team who wouldnt usually work together, building and nurturing supportive relationships, paving the way for healthy challenges to facilitate growth. We wanted to drive a feedback culture.

We gathered as a whole team every week to share learnings and discuss ideas to take forward. What I felt was the growth of the team and a willingness to take increased ownership and responsibility for happiness and fulfilment.

Our Perkbox insights tool, to measure engagement and workplace satisfaction, has seen our team engagement scores rise consistently.

EDAM Group, Britains largest privately owned credit-hire and post-accident services provider, interpreted their core values of innovation, respect, integrity, passion and fun as one team in a Minding EDAM wellbeing initiative.

Launched in May to encourage better mental health among their staff, they set aside time for colleagues to engage in mood-lifting events that included pilates, cycling, and a health and wellbeing check to encourage an open and honest culture. We look forward to hearing how this approach works.

Geogaming company CluedUp Games clearly see no constraints in geography with their innovative outdoor gaming pursuits, and theyve tackled team positivity and wellbeing in exactly the same way. Casting aside all traditional work place constraints, they strongly encourage flexible working practices giving employees the opportunity to set their own working hours and their locations on a day-to-day basis. No fixed hours, no set places of work, unlimited holiday allowance and the freedom to build a work-life around family commitments.

Yes, Ill let you pause reading this supplement to Google them and see if theyre hiring your skillset.

Useful Tip

If your budget so far this year has been eaten up, know that its free to do part of the Engaging Works Happiness at Work survey. You dont get all of the scientific data broken down, but you can see score movements for members of staff before and after doing the sessions.

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Bringing culture into the workplace - inews

This piece originally appeared in Study Hall.

Caroline Calloway likes to be identified as a writer. She makes this abundantly clear in a post directed at Grace Spelman, formerly a content producer at BuzzFeed, during one of Calloways many forgettable spats with media workers whose criticisms she has found chafing.

FYI I prefer writer, like you, Grace, Calloway noted in a parenthetical within a wall of text (Spelman had called her an Instagram blogger, which, for my money, is pretty apt).

Elsewhere on her Instagram, Calloway posts a picture of Trick Mirror, the lauded debut essay collection from the New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino. The book makes her insecure, she writes, because she cant seem to measure up to Tolentinos pristine search results. When you type Jia Tolentino into Google you get: Great writer! Benefit of the doubt! Kind assumptions! Media EGOT! She contrasts this apparent luck with her own results, which yield unsparing (and, frankly, excessive) coverage of some poorly planned creativity workshops consisting of flower crowns, salads, and organized vulnerability.

Calloways writerly ambition had been to document her life in real time on a platform best known for sharing selfies, to pioneer a new genre of memoir while cultivating a loyal social media following. She had secured a book deal at one point but wasnt able to deliver due to a worsening addiction to Adderall, so Instagram remained her literary venue of choice. And why not? Many writers good writers self-publish via newsletters or blogging platforms; the choice of the photo-centric Instagram merely makes the writers intentions of self-commodification more straightforward. There could not be any confusion about what was being sold: not just prose, but the person herself.

But to describe Calloway as a writer first and foremost would be extraordinarily generous. Her frenzied, disjointed dispatches beneath photos of her art-cluttered West Village studio floor are, in and of themselves, often myopic and uninteresting. It is the media-fueled mythos around her the disintegrated book deal, the scam workshops, the sensational and damning the Cut essay from her former best friend and collaborator Natalie Beach that have earned my attention and emotional investment. To my shame, I read every word Calloway writes.

But perhaps Calloway could be forgiven for conflating the work of writing with the work of marketing oneself as a writer. After all, to be a writer today is to make yourself a product for public consumption on the internet, to project an appealing image that contextualizes the actual writing. The women and they are mostly women who are most heralded in the media industry today are extremely online, starring in photoshoots and documenting their skincare routines and eating habits as much as discussing their process.

The influencer is insecure about not being the writer. But over this past summer of viral internet-fueled grifts and an equally intense barrage of high-profile book launches and interview tours, it struck me that there is functionally little difference between a lauded writer with a recognizable avatar and a prominent social-media influencer. The only difference is in the way each metabolizes the experience of influence.

The most famous writers have always been public figures with their own media-fueled mythos, of course. We have the glamorous mystique of Joan Didion, whose aspirational cool has made her a persistent object of reverence for white women with literary ambitions; the wild lore of Hunter S Thompson with his drugs and guns, the cigarette holder and aviators instantly recognizable even to those who havent read him; and the literary Brat Pack of Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, and company, who were themselves objects of fascination as extensions of their depressive, decadent, druggy fiction. Benjamin Mosers new authorized biography of Susan Sontag painstakingly attempts to reconcile the writers contradictory private self with her glamorous persona as a public intellectual. The books many reviews grapple with the unreliability of biographical interpretation and the insertions of the biographers own biases and blindspots.

But the image management that once seemed incidental, or at least parallel, to the literary profession seems now one of its most necessary, integral functions. In the age of Twitter and Instagram, an online presence, which is necessarily public and necessarily consumable, seems all but mandatory for a writer who reaches (or hopes to reach) a certain level of renown, especially for anyone dealing in personal essays or cultural criticism. In the way that the influencer uses her image to sell her swag, the writer leverages her life to sell her work, to editors and audiences.

Naomi Fry, known for her sharp dissections of celebrity, social media, and meme culture at the New Yorker, is perhaps equally known for her own social media presence as a funny, astute documentarian of her personal life, though always within the context of her job at a prestige publication and with more than a whiff of irony. If celebrities who play well on social media do so by being funny and relatable but more glamorous than you, writers who play well on those same platforms do so by being funny and relatable but smarter and more successful than you.

Last year, Fry gave an interview to the Caret, a tech publication that interviews innovators and visionaries shaping the digital landscape, in which she took stock of her modest internet fame and connection to influencer culture. When it comes to so-called personal brand building, even when you dont think youre doing it, youre still kind of doing it, she said. So Im not going to pretend its something Im not totally aware of, as anyone on social media is. But I think its true that I have no interest in presenting my life in a way thats idealized.

Indeed, who in the irony-soaked world of New York media does? For all our talk of Instagram as a vehicle for curating an idealized self, we know grainy displays of self-awareness are the real ticket filterless, sparse bathroom mirror selfies are infinitely cooler than the obviously posed and airbrushed. They denote a certain status, in fact, that comes with being in on the collective joke, with understanding the illusory nature of the medium and making use of it in a wry punchline at your own expense. You dont have to look talented or elegant online as long as you are, or could be.

If you arent already (internet-)famous, the lack of idealization, or the appearance thereof, could hurt you in the eyes of your peers or bosses. This is not a concern for the writer-influencer. On social media they joke about not writing, about their elaborate procrastination techniques, about getting high, about angsting to their therapists who dont understand the internet. Like descendants of Carrie Bradshaw in her apartment with its designer shoe-filled oven, they are performatively, romantically messy.

I couldnt help but wonder: if this self-consciously unadorned authenticity the thing supposedly separating writers from the polished Instagram influencers they critique yields status, followers, and an aspirational yearning in their fans, whats the difference?

As digital journalism has converged with influencer culture, a whole genre of coverage has sprung up to account for it, including breathless book-launch coverage around star authors that feels more like celebrity voyeurism. We want to know what and how writers eat, which skincare products they smear on their faces, and what theyre reading when theyre not writing. And so we have the debut writers holy trinity of New York Magazines Grub Street Diet, Into the Glosss Top Shelf, and the New York Timess By the Book. Jia Tolentino checked all of these boxes throughout her very visible book publicity tour over the summer a relentless whirlwind of glowing press and made self-deprecating jokes about saturating our newsfeeds (which felt very much in keeping with her public image we had come to know through these dispatches).

I asked Tolentino in an email about this exposure, about the cultivation of a public persona online, and the degree to which she goes about doing so consciously. She responded that she had been thinking about the question a lot lately, as shed been strapped to the soul-crushing (if also very fortunate) machine of book promotion. She is distressed by the imperative to commodify herself to sell her work, but it is something she recognizes as inescapable.

A good amount of my book is about how capitalism, the internet, the monetized self are all destructive to our functioning as real humans; yet, the better I express those ideas, the better I become a marketable object myself, Tolentino explained. Ive spent a lot of time, while promoting Trick Mirror, wondering if the work that brings me the most meaning in life (writing) will always necessarily bring me deeper into the clutches of the things that I hate (capitalism, and a way of being in which external incentives seem more important than internal ones).

She tries to navigate her life online unconsciously, instinctively, and without losing sight of the fact that her real life is more important than what she projects to an audience. One of the worst things that the internet does is make us value representations of a thing over the actual thing itself, and I think I just try to stay tight to that understanding that my actual self and life are a lot more important to me than the online representation of such, that my work is more important to me than any public idea of that work.

Tavi Gevinson, the polymathic founder of Rookie, grapples with this duality between the work and the workers persona in a New York Magazine cover story on how Instagram fame shaped her sense of self and her career alike. I think I am a writer and an actor and an artist, she writes. But I havent believed the purity of my own intentions ever since I became my own salesperson, too. The more she focuses on her own work, embracing the archetype of the writer rather than the influencer, the farther away she stays from Instagram, delegating updates to an assistant.

But when it comes to the commodification of the self, the work and the public idea of the work are often conflated, just as the internet flattens everything else. Its harder to separate the art from the artist, or the artists skincare. Maybe that is the natural endpoint of the influencers internet. Caroline Calloways great project is, ultimately, making her inner life into what she calls digital art, her life and its representation one glorious entangled mess. She has pursued the solidification of a public idea first and foremost; the body of work she has amassed in her posts project the persona she has made for herself. She knows she is a salesperson both of Matisse knockoffs and of her actual self and not only bluntly admits it but confidently conflates it with her creativity.

The self-disclosure required of an influencer whose brand is vulnerability, already unsettlingly close to the work-mandated social-media shilling required of most writers, can become almost indistinguishable from the work of an essayist who deals in the personal. In this way, the influencer could simply be a digital update of the confessional writer.

Shannon Keating at BuzzFeed recently wrote an essay exploring how the Calloway phenomenon has prompted her to re-examine her choice to write first-person essays. She draws a line, as I also did, from the dusk of the first-person industrial complex to the dawn of the influencer, what she considers to be an even more complicated and ethically murky digital economy of self-exposure and service content, spawned by a desperation for a clearly defined sense of identity. Were looking for answers, writes Keating. Were looking for relatable (or even better, aspirational) role models who are willing to open their lives up to us for inspection, and social media has spawned an endless supply of them. (Its an arc that can be traced back to Emily Gould in the early days of Gawker, who documented her experience in a 2008 New York Times Magazine essay.)

The root of all this angst: Keating had recently written a viral essay for BuzzFeed about falling in love on a lesbian cruise, and the effects of that virality had rendered her a de facto influencer, which troubled her. Had she, through the act of writing, made her personal life into a public commodity? The last thing I wanted was to turn Lynette and me into some sort of lesbian influencer couple, selling us as a desirable product Id much rather people check up on me to read my latest article, not to learn whether or not Im still with my girlfriend, she writes. But as someone who mines her own life for content who always has and probably always will I know thats a ridiculous thing to wish for.

Calloway, for her part, does not seem conflicted about her self-exposure in the slightest; nor, really, does the journalist Lauren Duca, whose aggressive personal branding has propelled her to the level of living meme. Duca got famous for a Teen Vogue piece that, for better or worse, reintroduced the term gaslighting into our political and personal nomenclature, but equally for calling Tucker Carlson a sexist pig as her mic was cut. Then she sold T-shirts emblazoned with a catchphrase borrowed from Carlsons sexist rant.

Still, she insists her public presence isnt self-aggrandizing. She is furious at any comparisons between herself and Calloway, claiming they overshadow her serious and important work. But that work, at least after the initial Teen Vogue salvos and TV appearances, has undoubtedly been overshadowed by her own labor of peddling a persona. Like Calloway, Duca has drawn hundreds of thousands of followers not just through a body of writing but through the projection of a lifestyle that appears compelling in a not particularly radical or innovative way.

Highly paid talks, university teaching gigs, big book deals, and sassy clapback-style tweets is a pretty uncontroversial vision of success as a journalist that many of us would like to copy, whatever we think of Duca herself. But all of this external posturing has overshadowed any actual reportage: at some point, the work becomes the continued maintenance of the image.

To truly contend with a term I suppose we should define it. A social media influencer, according to the Digital Marketing Institute, is simply a user who has established credibility in a specific industry, has access to a huge audience and can persuade others to act based on their recommendations. This is a broad definition that could encompass everyone from Chrissy Teigen (a celebrity who effectively markets her relatability) to Shaun King (another alleged grifter).

When encountering the influencer, we must therefore determine how their credibility was established, in which specific industry, and to what end they deploy their powers of persuasion. The answers to those questions determine whether we view a person online as worthy of our reverence or our scorn. We can accept Jia Tolentinos skincare tips because we know the work at the core of this brand is as solid as it gets, whereas Caroline Calloway becomes a punchline, because even the content that did exist was a ghostwritten illusion.

The problem comes down to the way we view work, and what we view as work in the first place. There is a perception that to simply exist in public space, to influence by living, is not work at all. These influencers who produce photos of themselves, who turn their wider lives into content rather than confining themselves to a byline, are thus dismissed as vapid and shallow, sources of pleasure and no more. The writer, by contrast, is viewed primarily as a purveyor of intellect and meritorious beauty. The writer gives us art, gives us insight and rigor, contextualizes the phenomena that confound us. Their labor is seen as more valid.

But these two imperatives are increasingly inextricable. The internet has become what Tolentino, in our exchange, called persona-based, which has sometimes worked to her advantage. Having come into media outside New York, with no connections and no experience, Ive always been aware that I owe a lot of my career to the fact that my temperament, my self, and my life all map well and easily onto the persona-based internet, she wrote, which has become a horrible substitute for a safety net for a lot of people, from medical GoFundMes to personal brands.

One must have a persona on the persona-based internet, but the persona must be honest, or at least maintain the appearance of honesty. The cultural critic Sarah Nicole Prickett expressed a shrugging ambivalence on the matter of her public persona in an interview with Mask Magazine. I very much have a public persona, even though its a small public, but I feel detached from it, she told Masks co-founding editor Hanna Hurr, who had asked about Pricketts Instagram presence, a cavalcade of sultry selfies, gallery installation shots, and party documentation with more conventionally famous friends. Its something I have, not something I am. Its not even something I feel like I made with any intent, which is also not something Im proud about.

Gevinson echoed this insistence that existing online for her had never been a thing she agonized over. Ive always thought I could be myself in public pretty easily by which I mean, speak without second-guessing myself too much on social media, in writing, in interviews. Artifice was not just absent from her online persona; it was something she feared and actively avoided. I never considered myself calculating who does? and when I did catch glimpses of my own ambition, I thought it was ugly, disgraceful, incongruous with my authentic self, who simply wanted to make things and connect with people and probably, one day, move to the woods.

The great division between writers and influencers is the appearance of effort in exerting influence. Its never cool to look like youre trying too hard. Calloway raves about her shape-shifting acumen, her persona-building, her bottomless ambition to create herself for her own profit; Prickett professes to think very little about her persona, while posing for her own essay on structured denim in SSENSE and being featured as a scene stealer by Mac Cosmetics. If the end result is the same, how much does the division matter?

The writer-influencers identity must be quickly identifiable by the consumer, distilled to a meme-like essence in which content is the same as form. The writing is lifestyle, and vice versa. Tolentino as a cool girl who plays beer pong and smokes a lot of weed. Prickett as an aloof and modelesque bohemian socialite. Fry as a funny and enviably fun-natured lover of all things lowbrow, proclaiming her obsessions with reality shows and random celebrities. Cat Marnell as a romantically messy party girl, a blonde and waifish Bukowski. Olivia Nuzzi as a shoeleather politico, the hot girl in a boys club with the establishment boyfriend to match. Taffy Brodesser-Akner as likable and liked, relatable and intellectual at the same time, the woman who, right now, has it all. Taffys (she can only be Taffy) enthusiasm is even raised as a curious anomaly in journalism; a Punch profiler described her as buoyant a palpable, energetic presence thats difficult to square with the typical image of a lurking or inconspicuous reporter. In other words: she doesnt even seem like a writer!

As a writer without much in the way of influence, I see these women and I feel an imperative to find the thing about me that could best be underscored, amplified, and repeated across platforms, the fragment of self that could become persona. I do not believe any of them to be calculating persona-crafters I take them at their word that what they present is authentic but I believe they have a very useful instinct, in addition to their talent for writing, for precisely which parts of themselves to share and how. Frankly, I fear that is an instinct that I lack but would do well to cultivate. The media industry is less stable than ever, and the one safe strategy seems to be the commodification of personality, turning your voice into followers and paid subscribers that no CEO can take away. We are all but forced to make ourselves, not just our words, the thing we sell.

If were lucky, like Tolentino said, the soul-crushing machine of self-promotion will come for us and the capitalist imperative we hate will become one with the art or work that we love. So maybe theres something to be said for throwing oneself into it wholeheartedly, without shame, maybe even skipping the part where you fritter away underpaid labor in the hopes that someone higher up will notice you. How many women wrote revealing first-person essays and came up empty handed? If were not lucky, the machine doesnt come at all.

Im not immune to any of this. I am acutely aware that I lack Gevinson and Prickett and Frys effortless knack at existing online that I am neurotic and prone to self-doubt in a way that stifles organic self-expression and that makes me anxious. Then I think about what it would mean to supplant that natural instinct with an intentionally crafted persona, and that makes me hate myself. I consider being more vulnerable on Twitter, then I consider all the ways in which that could backfire; I consider posting selfies; I consider writing personal essays and then I consider how all the ways I could mine my life for content make me want to crawl into a hole. The fact that all of the above is agonizing for me to think about makes me feel I am not cut out for this industry in its current state.

I consider also how the women whose work I most admire, whose careers I most want to emulate, are also women who I want to be. Whether or not that is by design, I cant help but feel it is no small part of what continues to drive me to click on their links and buy their books.

It does not escape me that I have been considering only women, that the question of how to optimally present oneself online feels distinctly feminine, and this feels unfair even as the skill is somewhat advantageous, but mostly it feels inevitable. We are socialized to be highly attuned to making ourselves palatable for an audience, to be pleasing to the eye and the ear. This is the case as much on Twitter and Instagram as the physical world. And so we are slotted into this category, seen as much for our apartments and outfits as our writing, left to compete on every level at once.

Meanwhile, the hard-bitten male longform journalist posting Instagram stories of unknown jungles is not treated or viewed as an influencer; he doesnt even worry about his influence in the first place. Nor does the male blogger-turned-venture capitalist who tweets and podcasts constantly. Nor the male mid-level editor bragging about an obviously four-figure fashion purchase on social media. The age of the famous dudeitor middle-aged bros casually dominating media in a laid-back, unaffected posture is over, even though their domination no doubt remains in the background. (Anonymity is a luxury.) Instead we have the age of the woman writer-influencer, both journalist and celebrity.

Im not sure that theres an answer here, only that while I wring my hands over whether to press send on a tweet or make my private Instagram public, Caroline Calloway is meeting with producers interested in turning her Insta-memoir into a movie. I still do not think she is primarily a writer. I do, however, think we have entered a point of no return in the realm of media-industry success that necessarily brings us closer to her than we would perhaps like to admit.

Those who insist that the job of the writer is simply, only, to write are deluding themselves. Editors whose advice is to get off Twitter, put your head down, and do the work are missing something fundamental and indispensable about digital media. Its that all the things that invite derision for influencers self-promotion, fishing for likes, posting about the minutiae of your life for relatability points are also integral to the career of a writer online. At least if you want to be visited by that holy trinity when it comes time for your book launch, you must be an influencer in all the ways that matter.

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The journalist as influencer: how we sell ourselves on social media - The Guardian

Remember all those scandalous things, the big scoops, and the incredulous stories we heard or read about the pop icon? The music legend retells all those (and then some) with a lot of wit, humour and self-awareness.

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The book is replete with anecdotes not just about Elton but also people from his social circle. The name- dropping is not ostentatious, it is organic to incidents and accidents in his life. Like once, when he was often under the influence of dangerous amounts of an addictive stimulant drug, he threw a party. And he recalls, I was flying... When a scruffy-looking guy I didnt recognize wandered into the party. I loudly demanded to know what the gardener was doing helping himself to a drink. There was a moments shocked silence, broken by the sound of Bob Halleys voice: Elton, thats not the f*&@ing gardener. Its Bob Dylan.

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He even gave the iconic Andy Warhol the snub. Elton was hanging out with John Lennon doing drugs, when Warhold knocked at their hotel suite. They decided against opening the door as they didnt want to be clicked. So Warhol kept knocking and finally left.

Elton recalls, after he debuted with his new hairdo at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, a writer noted, that I looked like I had a dead squirrel on my head. He was mean, but I was forced to concede, he also had a point.

The honesty, through which he looks at himself makes it different from the regular celebrity memoirs. Its a firecracker of a gift this Diwali. He owns it.

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First Published:Oct 21, 2019 16:50 IST

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Sir Elton Johns autobiography is warm, moving and a hit - Hindustan Times

Cher transplanted Las Vegas glitz to the O2MARILYN KINGWILL

The first thing that struck you about Chers O2 extravaganza: wow, her voice sounds great. Who cares if it wasnt always coming out of her mouth. This is Cher World, where nature is your enemy and nothing is fake if you paid good money for it. And second, how exactly did she manage to transplant the multicoloured glitz of Las Vegas to the granite grey industrial zone of North Greenwich? It is one thing to do a costume change per song, but to do an entire set change per song? Thats impressive.

Just in case anyone wasnt sure who Chers core audience is, oiled-up gladiators enacted a pneumatic dance routine before the worlds least subtle 73-year-old descended on to the stage, wearing a massive blue

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Cher review camp is too austere a word to cover it - The Times

The France-based, Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping, who was known for weaving Chinese and Western historical canons together to create provocative results, died suddenly on Saturday. The pioneering member of the Chinese avant-garde was 65 years old.

Born in 1954 in Xiamen, China, Huang was a founding member of the Xiamen Dada group. The collective first came to attention when in 1986 they torched a number of the paintings they had recently shown at the Xiamen Peoples Art Museum. The radical act was prompted by their dissatisfaction with the circumstances around the show. The collectives motto was Zen is Dada, Dada is Zen, and Huangs hero was Marcel Duchamp.

Over the following decades, Huang continued to fuse elements of Zen Buddhism, Dadaism, and a Duchampian sense of irony to create large-scale surrealistic installations and sculptures, some of which fell foul of political censorship in China, while one notorious work upset animal rights activists in North America.

Huang Yong Ping was a giant of the avant-garde, a father figure for generations of artists and thinkers, the Paris-based art dealer Kamel Mennour told artnet News. He opened up the delicate path of the dialogue between worlds with intact engagement and philosophical view on the worlds turbulences, Mennour said, adding, He was an immense artist. He was my friend. The dealer began formally representing the artist a decade ago by which time Huang was already settled in Paris.

The self-taught artist, who numbered Joseph Beuys, John Cage, as well as Duchamp as inspirations, maintained a critical position and cast a skeptical eye on a rapidly globalizing world, which his career personified.

In 1987, he made what would become an iconic work, The History of Chinese Painting and the History of Modern Western Art Washed in the Washing Machine for Two Minutes, by destroying art history books by Wang Bomin andHerbert Read in the laundry. The artist placed the resulting pulp atop of piece of broken glass on a Chinese teabox.

In 1989, Huangtraveled toParisto take part in the groundbreaking Centre Pompidou exhibition Magiciens de la Terre. He stayed in France, which he went on to represent at theVenice Biennale in 1999. For his prestigious Monumenta commission in 2016, he filled the Grand Palais in Paris with a giant, serpentine sculpture and shipping containers to createEmpires.

Huangs controversialBat Project 2was censored at the inauguralGuangzhou Triennial in 2002. His installation featured a model of the cockpit of an American EP-3 spy plane,and referenced a fatal collision between a US and a Chinese plane in Chinese airspace. In Huangs sculpture, the US plane included taxidermy bats hanging from its blasted-out windows. The animals signified the gap in understanding between the West, where bats are often feared, and China, where they symbolize happiness.

It would not be the last time his work, which often featured animals, was pulled from a major exhibition. In 2018, HuangsTheater of the Worldwas heavily modified by the Guggenheim Museum after vehement protests from animal rights activists. A petition to take down the title work and two other pieces from the group showArt and China After 1989 garnered half a million signatories within days.

In Huangs work, caged snakes and lizards were meant to devour insects, and probably each other, during the show. The Guggenheim showed the artists sculptural cage without the animals.

In an interview with artnet Newss editor-in-chief, Andrew Goldstein, Guggenheim director Richard Armstrong described Huang as an artist asking tough questions, and that is brutal. New Yorks Gladstone Gallery, which also represents the artist, put up a show of Huangs work following the museums decision.

Huang maintained that he was against provocation for its own sake, asking: How can an artwork be created just to be censored? HisTheatre of the Worldwas shown as the artist intended at the Guggenheim Bilbao but only as an empty cage at SFMOMA.

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He Was an Immense Artist: The Chinese Artist Huang Yong Ping, Who Fused the Spirit of Duchamp with Zen Buddhism, Has Died - artnet News

Its the start of the workweek. Another ordinary workweek. This likely includes the same old routine, a mix of getting ready, wrangling a kid or two, getting stuck in traffic, getting stuck in meetings, responding to never-ending email, running errands, making dinner, doing bedtime. And doing it all over again.

In short, theres a lot of rushing from one place to the next, from one task to another. And it all feels all-too familiar.

Its natural to get bored with the seemingly mundane. Its natural to dismiss your days as dull and uninteresting. Similar days will blend into each other, and before you know it, the week is up.

But it doesnthaveto be this way.

When Shonda Moraliss son was 4 years old, he asked her how babies in the womb received nourishment. After Moralis did her best to give an age-appropriate answer, her son shared his summary: So let me get this straight. You ate food, it went into yourbelly, then intomybelly button through your extension cord?

Moralis replied, Extension cord. Exactly, and there has been an invisible extension cord connecting our hearts ever since.

Moralis, MSW, LCSW, a psychotherapist and coach, shares this sweet story in her new book Breathe, Empower, Achieve: 5-Minute Mindfulness for Women Who Do It All.In it, she encourages readers to reconnect to our childhood sense of awe, curiosity, and wonder. Which is similar, she writes, to the idea of beginners mind from Zen Buddhism.

Moralis suggests exploring this idea by picking one activity, either at work or at home. She writes, Imagine that you have never encountered this situation before. What do you notice? What is most prevalent? How does this impact or shift the moment for you?

We can apply beginners mind to all kinds of activities, according to Moralisfrom driving to emailing to (even) being at a meeting.

When we bring beginners mind to everyday mundane or rote tasks, we are not only granted a fresh perspective; we will consequently reach our goals with less resistance or frustration.

When you apply beginners mind to an email, you can marvel at the technology, at your ability to connect with someone whos three thousand miles away or in another country. When you apply beginners mind to your morning, you can marvel at the sunrise and at your childs surprising questions. You can marvel at the convenience of your toaster oven, the delicious flavor of your fresh bagel, and the aroma of your hot coffeeeven as youre running out the door (and running back in, because lets be honest, you probably forgot something).

Our mindset determines our mood and our behavior. When we open our eyes (and tune into our other senses), when we take less for granted, we enjoy brighter, happier, less stressful days. We also feel alive. Energized. Invigorated. Empowered. Maybe were even kinder and more patient.

Moralis includes a beautiful quote from Maya Angelou, which we can regularly remind ourselves of (and maybe even recite every morning): This is a wonderful day. Ive never seen this one before.

And, of course, you havent.

Photo byAleksandr LedogorovonUnsplash.

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When You're Bored with the Day to Day - PsychCentral.com