I know I run a book blog so maybe this isn’t the right platform for this, but girls: Please look out for other girls. Tonight I was stuck at a bus stop in Shoreditch circa 2 AM and saw another young woman getting harassed by a drunk, aggressive dude, and at first I thought, “She’s got it under control.” But then he started touching her and I went “No, that’s definitely not right.” So I barged over and shoved him out of the way and said, “Beth?? Oh my God, how are you, I haven’t seen you since grade school!” And this girl I’d never seen before in my life threw her arms around my neck and whispered, “You are an angel, thank God.” We talked for fifteen minutes, the creep lost interest, I watched her get on the bus and I will sleep so much better knowing she got home in one piece. If you see something weird happening, intervene. The worst that can happen is embarrassment, and I think that’s worth the risk when you consider the alternative.
Every platform is the right platform for this.
Yes, always reblog. Also if you don’t feel safe intervening call the police!
The catalyst was a customer — a father of four who had put his hand up the shirt of a busser clearing his family’s table. The busser was so stunned she didn’t report it, but the event sparked a flood of reactions from staff members who’d had similar experiences. At our meeting, women shared stories about harassment from customers and said that when they tried to report it to male managers, they were often ignored because the incidents seemed unthreatening through a male lens.
We decided on a color-coded system in which different types of customer behavior are categorized as yellow, orange or red. Yellow refers to a creepy vibe or unsavory look. Orange means comments with sexual undertones, such as certain compliments on a worker’s appearance. Red signals overtly sexual comments or touching, or repeated incidents in the orange category after being told the comments were unwelcome.
When a staff member has a harassment problem, they report the color — “I have an orange at table five” — and the manager is required to take a specific action. If red is reported, the customer is ejected from the restaurant. Orange means the manager takes over the table. With a yellow, the manager must take over the table if the staff member chooses. In all cases, the manager’s response is automatic, no questions asked. (At the time of our meeting, all our shift managers were men, though their supervisors were women; something else we’ve achieved since then is diversifying each layer of management.)
In the years since implementation, customer harassment has ceased to be a problem. Reds are nearly nonexistent, as most sketchy customers seem to be derailed at yellow or orange. We found that most customers test the waters before escalating and that women have a canny sixth sense for unwanted attention. When reds do occur, our employees are empowered to act decisively.
The color system is elegant because it prevents women from having to relive damaging stories and relieves managers of having to make difficult judgment calls about situations that might not seem threatening based on their own experiences. The system acknowledges the differences in the ways men and women experience the world, while creating a safe workplace.
Brilliant.
And to support her brilliance, I’ll be buying her cookbook, Mac and Cheese.
I literally just signed up on the website and bras go higher than DDD and undies go up to 3XL so yeah guys it’s more inclusive than VS, the article is inaccurate
Hey everyone, I just wanted to say that for my capstone in my undergrad, our class ran an ad campaign for VS. So, of course, we got to talk to a ton of executives for the company. One of our goals for them was to figure out how to make VS appeal more to the younger generation. The girls in my class (which was about 98% of my class) immediately jumped on the “body inclusivity” train. Why not start hiring plus-size models to be angels? Why not start including bigger sizes?
The executives immediately took it off the table. Their words were “We are interested in selling the fantasy of the supermodel” in layman’s terms that equates to “no fat chicks” and we spent the rest of the meeting with the ladies in my class (myself, included) questioning the executives and essentially jumping down their throats.
Victoria’s Secret is not interested in body inclusivity. They don’t care about appealing to a wider audience, despite their failing sales. They’re seriously a bunch of older, out of touch people who don’t understand that times are changing and they will very soon get left behind. We gave them facts, statistics, and survey results that we collected that PROVED that people aren’t interested in VS anymore and that’s exactly why. But they don’t care about that. They don’t care about improving their own image. They just don’t care about their own consumer base.
I hope somebody besides me reads this. Because I want more people to know what narrow minded scumbags the executives at Victoria’s Secret are.
HIGHER THAN DDD YOU SAY? ME AND GIRLS ARE ACCEPTED!!
This 7-year-old wrote a book to prove black girls can be princesses, too
Todd Taylor’s nickname for his 7-year-old daughter Morgan was “Princess,” but one day she told him he couldn’t call her that anymore.
Morgan told Today that she explained to her father, “I love it when you call me a princess but I know I am not really a real one … Real princesses were vanilla and I can’t really be a princess.”
Almost all of the princesses in movies and books Morgan had seen were white. “I received the biggest wake-up call,” Taylor told Today.
So he and his daughter researched women leaders of color — and found that, actually, there are a lot of stories of black and brown princesses.
Morgan and her dad decided to write a book together, so other kids could learn about inspirational princesses of color.
Their book, Daddy’s Little Princess, is out now, and Morgan and her dad say the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
– Communication doesn’t work on bullies. Telling a bully they’re making you feel bad is the wrong way to go. They want to make you feel bad. That’s the point.
– being kind to a bully doesn’t always mean they’ll stop. Sometimes it means they’ll just use your kindness to manipulate you while still continuing to bully you.
– not every bully has a sympathetically tragic home life. Sometimes people are just mean. Sometimes people just get off on hurting others.
– on that note, a tough home life is a reason, not an excuse. You don’t have to put up with bullying because somebody’s life sucks, just like you don’t have to let someone mug you because they’re broke.
– in order to forgive someone, they have to apologize first. If your bully has not apologized to you, you do not owe them anything.
– getting bullied as a kid can still mess you up in adult life. Maybe kids grow out of being bullies, but the marks they left often don’t go away.
– there are ways to get people to stop bullying you, but they almost all involve being mean back.
– as long as parents keep raising shitty bullying kids, there will be bullies. No amount of assemblies and hand-drawn posters will fix the problem. It’s the parents’ fault.
the only time I got a real life bully to stop was when I punched him in the face.
Yeah I can’t say if this was the best way to handle things, but I was pretty young when I took up an Ender Wiggin approach to dealing with bullies.
This is a hot take on this, but Imma say it anyway.
Stigma isn’t always intentional cruelty or malicious words. Sometimes it’s:
Being treated like a helpless child all the time
Hearing The Caring Neurotypical Voice™ when people talk to you
“Oh you can do that?” in regards to being able to do normal things everyone else can do.
Not being given the freedom to do what you want out of concern
“(Name) is… different”
Everyone acts so scared to name the disorder like it’s a summon for the devil
Say it. Say autistic. Say schizophrenic. Say bipolar. Say the disorder we have. Say it.
Struggling to keep your head above the water but keeping it in because you’d rather face the suffering alone than have everyone walk on eggshells around you
“I have X disorder, I can’t do this activity right now” “Oh but honey, you shouldn’t put yourself in a box. just think you’re not and it might help you recover. give it a try.”
“I am not broken, let me do it” “Honey, I know it’s sometimes hard to accept but you have X disorder and shouldn’t push yourself. sit this one out.”
Not being given the chance to prove that you can take care of yourself or do things the others can
“Oh have you met that boy/girl from (grade/ place)? He’s also [X Disorder].”
it might “not be good for someone like you”
Having someone tell your story for you. Not being given a voice or having it shushed by people who are neurotypical.
People looking at you like you’re shattered glass, their eyes filled with pity and sympathy as if you’re a living tragedy, as if you are this thing that they wish they could fix.
They do not ask you if you want to be fixed. They do not consider that this is your life, and although occasionally troubled, this is yours and it’s the only life you’ve had.
They cannot fathom you ever being happy with your life, but you are. Perhaps not always, but you’ve learned to be content with your life.
Sometimes they push you. But sometimes they also hold you back.
“So, you don’t like the way our little fictional war came out? You don’t like Rachel dead and Tobias shattered and Jake guilt-ridden? You don’t like that one war simply led to another? Fine. Pretty soon you’ll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents.”
— K. A. Applegate, in response to criticism of the Animorphs ending. (via queenofthepiskies)
Last December, the FCC voted to to kill net neutrality. If we do not take action, this will kill the free and open internet as we know it. The internet needs you—all of you—to make sure your voices are heard NOW.
We need all hands on deck for this one. It may be our last chance. If you’re feeling under-informed and overwhelmed about why net neutrality is so incredibly important, we have this handy guide just for you.
Here’s what you can do to save the internet:
In mid-May, the Senate will vote on a resolution to overrule the FCC using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). We only need one more vote in the Senate to win.Write or call your Senators or Representatives. You can also text BATTLE to 384-387 to get more information on how to write to your reps. You can do this, Tumblr.
Join us and dozens of your other favorite companies like Etsy, Vimeo, Reddit, and GitHub to raise awareness with the Red Alert campaign being run by Battle for the Net. Just add this small widget to your Tumblr to let your followers know how they can contact their reps. It’s as easy as copying and pasting the small line of code right into the customize theme page on the web.
This is important. This matters. It’s up to you to help.
wupacing 