the best reaction to chris brown and pon de forehead I have seen

probably (or maybe not) you have heard about chris brown beating on rihanna. most likely, you don't really care. that is fine, they suck. BUT, the video below is the best, most intellectual reaction I have seen w/o being preachy.

this woman, Elizabeth Mendez Berry, wrote a ground-breaking VIBE article about domestic violence in hip-hop entitled "Love Hurts: Rap's Black Eye." (read here) (she wrote it in reaction to everybody in the hip hop community freaking out and getting pissed at big pun's wife, b/c after he died, she helped create a documentary on him and put in actual footage of him pistol whipping her from a security camera.)

for example, this is a comment off of a page that had the link to the video "Sometimes bitches get outta line, you don't know what she may have done to deserve that, maybe she was snortin coke in front of his kids or something, I'd pistol whip a girl if they were doing drugs in front of my son." there were a bunch more, too, though that were like "even if he's a good rapper he is scum if he hits a women. (and what she "did" to "deserve it" was Pun thought she had misplaced his gun from where he put it, but someone else actually put it somewhere else)



she talks about why we are so reluctant and unwilling to acknowledge victim abuse. for example, she said everybody freaked out at pun's wife "for airing their dirty laundry," but what she actually was trying to do was stop the cycle of violence their own kids by talking about it (pun came from a violent household). whatever. just watch it. or go read this.

Lady Friends

There was an excellent article this past weekend in the Sunday Times Style mag by Jessica Brinton in which she speaks to Shere Hite (a renowned sex researcher) about platonic female-female relationships and how jealousy and mistrust can interfere. The article explores not only how we often let our competitive nature get in the way of friendship, but how we often put these sort of relationships to the side in favor of our romantic ones. Hite points out that while marriage is viewed as the ultimate consecration of romantic love, there isn't really anything to take special friendships to a higher level.

"The life cycle of friendships can be like that of a love affair. It surges and then it dies, because it doesn't know where to go. There is no such thing as a 'frienship party' and that's a shame. We need a word as beautiful as marriage."

She also argues that because modern society focuses so much on sexual love we do not express physical love towards our friends, and we are, as a society, starved for affection.

"Back in the days before a one-night stand was still eternal ruination, ladies were much more inclined to roll around in the hay together and call each other 'dearest one' without worrying about people getting the wrong idea"

read the article here.