A Round up of Body Politics, Body Image and Body Justice News

 

Gender

• “Last year, Air Zimbabwe and Ethiopian Airlines made major strides towards the inclusion of women in the aviation world with the launch of their all-women flight crews. Women continue to be at the forefront of African-based air travel with the establishment of South Africa’s Fly Blue Crane, the first airline to be founded by a black woman. Fly Blue Crane, which has been operating domestically within South Africa since its inception last September, will be conducting its very first international flight when it launches its service from Cape Town to Windhoek on May 13.”

 

• ““They should have them every day at every hour because assaults don’t have a schedule,” Jimena Soria of Gire Feminist Group told Al Jazeera in the video. Mexico City first began implementing its women-only subway train carriages in 2000 and started circulating women-only pink buses in 2008. But the Mexican capital is hardly alone, cities in Japan, Brazil, Iran and India have also implemented similar practices over the years. But feminist artist Lizeth Gamboa thinks the separation of men and women during a commute actually makes issues of public harassment and assault worse.“

Violence

• “A public awareness campaign against sexual violence in Nova Scotia is expected to be launched this fall. As part of the announcement, Dartmouth student Kayley Dixon, 14, read “A Touch of Sexual Assault,” a powerful and troubling poem she wrote about what it’s like being a teen girl today. Dixon is involved in the Youth Art Connection project, one of the groups that received funding from the Nova Scotia government this week to fight sexual violence. Witness Dixon’s reading here.

 

Identity

• “Haneefah Adam,  24, a master’s graduate from Nigeria, created the “Hijarbie” [Instagram] account. ‘I set up the account initially to create an avenue to make modest outfits for dolls, because I haven’t really seen one before,’ Adam told Al Jazeera. ‘Before I created the account, I hadn’t seen a doll in hijab that had her own account and personality. This account provided that hijabi style avenue.’ …The official Barbie Collection has a World Culture collection featuring Venetian Muse, Tribal Beauty, Maiko and Inuit Legend, but as yet no hijab-donning figure.” Find out more about Adam and Hijarbie in this Mic video.

• Black West Point cadets under scrutiny for raised fists in photo. “[W]hen a photo of 16 female, African-American cadets making the gesture was posted online last month, it raised eyebrows at the elite training academy, which produces many of the nation’s future military leaders. The photo circulated among students over social media, said a school representative. Soon, it grew into an on-campus controversy — a potential break in the taboo against advocacy by military personnel.”

 

• “I own a teacup that has the words every day I’m hustlin’ scrawled around the rim. Filled with bow-shaped paper clips and other ephemera, the teacup sits on my desk as a reminder: to work hard, to keep going, to aim high, and prioritize productivity. Yet it is only at my elbow for an hour at a time at most; most days, I can only see the self-satisfied teacup from my bed. For the majority of each day, I am in one bed or another. Much of that time, I’m lying with my eyes closed and listening to an audiobook. I am not, in fact, hustlin’. I am a chronically ill woman, stuck on the sidelines.”- Esmé Weijun Wang I’m Chronically Ill and Afraid of Being Lazy for Elle 

Art/Culture

• Ramiro Gomez’s art focuses on the invisible bodies that inhabit the most prestigious landmarks and residences of Los Angeles. “Roughly five years ago, artist Ramiro Gomez was working as a private nanny for a family in the Hollywood Hills. In his spare time, he had begun making small collages that explored issues of labor. His focus: the mostly Latino nannies, gardeners, construction workers and valets who make the California dream possible to a certain moneyed set, but whose physical presence is often left out of renderings of the Los Angeles landscape.

• Lyric Seal aka Neve Be, Kaiden Nia-Ali and the Harlot staff have broken down who Becky really is, in Listen: Some of My Best Friends Are Named Becky. “Culturally and historically speaking, Becky is an oblivious cis girl with some normatively and hegemonically attractive physical characteristics. She might be thin (with no butt), she might have naturally straight thin silky hair, she might have thin lips—she might generally have a thin, fragile sense of the world and her place in it. Distracted by her insecurities, impervious to how her wielding of her privilege aids her and hurts other women, she might even call herself a feminist, or an ally, but she might not be in several ways….”

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