HyperLoop555

#BlackEarthRising #ChewingGum  #MichaelaCoel   I n a series of videos uploaded to  Twitter  in late June, Michaela Coel sits in her bedroom amid a sea of wigs, hair creams, wig stands and preening products. She picks them up, wig after wig, bottle after bottle, and throws them with force into a black bin liner. She is done with spending hours perfectly positioning her hair, Coel tells the camera – not just the straight hair, but the curly “mixed race” hair, too, and any notion that she should look, act, think a certain way to be attractive. When we meet a couple of weeks later, Coel tells me that act of rebellion against Eurocentric beauty standards feels final. Before, she would switch between wigs and a buzz cut, depending on her mood. Today her hair is shaved down to a No 2, and on the set of the gal-dem-Guardian cover shoot, she’s wondering aloud whether she needs to go shorter. The makeup artist and stylist are not sure, but when Coel sees my hair (a 0.5...

#TheWiz #DianaRoss #LenaHorne #MichaelJackson #QuincyJones #SidneyLumet #StephanieMills Forty-two years after its original release, no film has uniquely defined black culture and shaped the framework of a musical genre quite like “The Wiz.” An adaptation of the groundbreaking Broadway musical — itself a retelling of L. Frank Baum's classic 1900 children's fantasy “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” that became the beloved Judy Garland movie — the Sidney Lumet-directed film had a rapturous soundtrack produced by Quincy Jones, a cast that included Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Lena Horne, Nipsey Russell, Mabel King, and Richard Pryor and an aesthetic firmly rooted in black culture. For a generation of black Americans, this was the first time they saw people who spoke, sung, and moved the way they did in a Broadway production and, later, a big-screen musical, and it has become a kind of rite of passage for the black community. Everyone remembers their first time experiencing “The...

#LGBTQ+  #queercafés #Cuties #VirginiaBauman  #IrisBainumHoule  Across the country, queer cafés, mixers, and stores are providing options that aren't gay bars — and that's revolutionary. On any given day in Los Angeles, LGBTQ+ locals and tourists have few choices when it comes to finding other queer and trans people — at least, in a space that’s not a bar. The go-tos , especially for cisgender gay men of legal drinking age, are gay bars, largely found in the tony city of West Hollywood. But for everyone else who identifies as LGBTQ+, such spaces are less than ideal, and for youth and those who are sober or in recovery, they aren’t an option at all. That's one reason Virginia Bauman and her business partner Iris Bainum-Houle opened  Cuties , a queer-owned, operated, and focused café in East Hollywood. Open daily from mornings into late afternoons, with events often hosted in the evenings, Cuties is an accessible, alcohol-free spot for LGBTQ+ people to just...

#Health #MentalHealth #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #BPD #Psychology  "It's not something I have, it's something I am." That's how Rebecca Bunch, a character on the CW's  Crazy Ex-Girlfriend , played by Rachel Bloom, described herself after being  diagnosed  with  borderline personality disorder  on the show. That hasn't been the only mention of BPD in pop culture recently. In May,  Saturday Night Live 's Pete Davidson took to Instagram Stories to talk about his own experience with BPD—and how, contrary to what some of his critics think, those with borderline personality disorder can maintain successful relationships. "Just because someone has a  mental illness  does not mean they can’t be happy and in a relationship,” he wrote. “It also doesn’t mean that person makes the relationship toxic. I just think it’s f*cked up to  stigmatize people as crazy  and say that they are unable to do stuff that anyone can do. It’s not t...

 #InTheSilence #UnderGreySkies #MahoganySessions #JPCooper     I've been seeking silver linings, feeling incomplete Singing "oh oh I wish it didn't taste so bittersweet" So enamoured, stutter, stammered, oh my voice was broke Like a poor man stood before the queen I tripped over my tongue before I spoke And though I never said it with words There was love in the silence Even now after all of these years You're the light in my darkness Used to share that feeling, dreaming Gazing at the bedroom ceiling Oh oh now I'm lay here wishing you'd come home And though I never said it with words There was love in the silence Even now after all of these years You're the light in my darkness Darling please, listen close and you'll hear There's still love in the silence Even now after all these long years I feel love in the quiet And though I never said it with words There was love in the silence Even now after all of these years You're the light in my...