Last March and early April, I blogged about cyberbullying and featured Monica Lewinsky's Ted Talk about it. Well, two more celebs have weighed in about being cyberbullied: Rumer Willis (daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore) and Audrina Patridge (reality star and TV personality).Cyberbullying – The Fastest Growing Faceless Crime.As I noted in prior blogs, Patti Agatston, PhD— from www.cyberbullyhelp.com—defines cyberbullying as "using the Internet or other digital devices to send or post … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2015
Face/voice recognition—evil twins for cleft lip folks and perhaps us all.
Could Wells Fargo's involvement with cutting edge face and voice recognition be evil twins? There are many evil twins out there just like the so-called Twisted Twins, Jen and Sylvia Soska who brought us the horror films AMERICAN MARY and SEE NO EVIL 2.Well, defenders of our right to privacy feel so, but surprisingly, so do many cleft kids and adults.The anti-surveillance state. The privacy folks' opposition to face and voice recognition has been made clear, and my recent blog lays out … [Read more...]
Support a cleft kid who’s endured much pain.
Hoping you can send some positive energy to an 11 year-old midwestern boy named Tyler. He's scheduled to have another cleft lip/palate surgery this Thursday, June 18.Bilateral clefts experience extra pain.According to his brave and resourceful mom who wrote me a heartfelt note* the other day, Tyler's had it tough of late. He feels like an outcast because bullies lay into him and call him names. As a bilateral cleft born with gaps to the left and right of the midline, I'd warrant a guess that … [Read more...]
Block face recognition, make yourself digitally invisible.
Cleft kids often want to hide their faces. That's why they often love Halloween with its permission to hide behind masks. Adult clefts such as myself —and everyone else, for that matter— may soon be in the same boat as cleft kids. There may be occasions, and lots of 'em, when we want to block Big Brother, the NSA, or others from surveilling us.For this reason, I'm quoting—in its entirety—a recent Raw Story article by Janet Burns, AlterNet which is even more apropo now that the US Congress is … [Read more...]
Hollywood’s beauty ideal changes, but symmetry’s always king
What sort of female faces has Hollywood pushed since its early days? What was done to these faces in lieu of today's photoshopping with respect to makeup, eyebrow shaping, and hair (you know, big hair vs curly hair vs bobbed hair). And what kind of bodies went with these faces: thin, curvy, tall and leggy, etc? Enduring symmetry. No matter what beauty ideal Hollywood promoted, symmetry's always been king. Sophia Loren—1960s idealAs Bustle writer JR Thorpe, tells it:'The history of Western … [Read more...]