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Black Women Run, Too

I recently received the Sept/Oct 2010 Women’s Running magazine and there’s a strong chance I may cancel the subscription. The magazine itself has some almost-useful-to-me information, but each time it comes in the mail, I’m reminded that the magazine is really not geared to me as a black female.

Women's Running magazine

Just a glance at recent covers can tell you that. In the two years this magazine has been coming to my house, I don’t ever remember a woman of color on the front of the magazine. Inside the magazine, not one of the articles features a woman of color. Three ads contain a woman of color: One Latina near the beginning of the magazine, then on page 76 (this issue is 80 pages) in the lower left corner and again on the back of the magazine. The only time you see females of color accompanying an article is when they are children. Of course! It’s so uplifting to see young black and brown girls interested in fitness. *eyeroll*

Of course, this is nothing new. Women of color are be used to the dearth of useful information in magazines geared to (white) women. Self, Shape, Women’s Fitness, Prevention, and Fitness Magazine have never pretended to cater to me. That’s why I will never subscribe or read these magazines. But when I saw “Women’s Running” (previously Her Running), I had wrongly assumed that meant all women. If anything, this is extremely clear in the beauty sections, which mainly focus on products geared to those with fair skin and non-kinky hair. In other words, I’m not going to hold my breath expecting an article on which hair care products are best for black women who swim. Which is okay. I don’t need Women’s Running to change to fit me.

I think what astounds me most, is that when you consider the make up of the US Woman’s Track & Field team, it is mostly black women. I do not recall seeing them interviewed in this magazine. However, I do see many interviews from past white Olympians, including those who have never won a medal. When I go running in my neighborhood the young Latinas and older Asian women put rest to the belief that only white women run. When I join a race and see so many black women of various ages, I refuse to believe the image these magazines give me. There is a reason that I follow @blackgirlsrun on Twitter.

Sadly, there’s not many options for me out there. Heart & Soul magazine has a very, very limited fitness section. I used to subscribe to this magazine for years, but figured it was time to let go when I only wanted to read one article from it. Instead, I’ll continue what I’ve been doing; sending out tweets and blog posts asking black female athletes for tips. Word of mouth is strong among black women. We have that going for us.

Hopefully, I’ll learn of a useful-to-me magazine.

Manners / People / Social Media — Comments
14
Dec 09

You don’t always have to share

The past few weeks on Twitter and Facebook, I’ve been privy to the rejection of my friends. They post things like “Coworker had a party. Invited everyone in my department, but me.” How are they finding out about these affairs? Through social networking.

One year, a coworkers hosted a holiday party at a local restaurant. She only invited the administrative people in the office. I was an administrative person in the office, but I worked for the district. I was not invited. That did not stop her from sending out the email to her ‘admins’ list which I was on. At the bottom of the email it said not to tell me because I wasn’t a branch worker. It also said not to mention it to her bosses. Unfortunately, the way the email system was set up, the team and branch managers were automatically cc’d on emails sent from her. She had no idea.

While I was not hurt at being sidelined for this event since I didn’t like that coworker anyway, her team manager was pissed. She then spent the next 3 weeks making all the admins miserable because she was excluded.

It’s great that these services have made it easier to keep in touch, to let friends know what’s going on, but for whatever reason people forget to filter. Maybe they forget that they’ve “friended” coworkers on these sites or perhaps they just have no idea that a coworker is following them on Twitter. All the same, when there’s a private event happening, I’ve never understood the need to share that information.

Even before the advent of social networking it was just awful not only to see friends feel down because they weren’t invited to things, but to hear of social events from friends that I was not invited to. What’s the point of sharing that? Or rather, why say, “We had so much fun at David’s house last night.” as opposed to saying, “Oh, we had dinner with friends.”

My husband and I know this group of people who have been friends with each other for a long time. They take trips to San Diego, Tahoe or Vegas together. They have never once invited us to go along. That doesn’t stop them from talking about it. And over the years, I wondered what was wrong with them they’d do that to someone. After awhile, I just stopped talking to them. To me, it was clear that we weren’t considered “real” friends.

During the holiday season & especially with so many people using Twitter and Facebook to update their statuses, it only makes sense that you don’t post, “Getting ready for dinner party @soandso’s house. I love my coworkers!” or “Last night’s party at @coworkers house was wonderful! Thanks for inviting us!” knowing full well that there were coworkers who were not in attendance or invited. After all, think of how you’d feel to learn you were excluded from an event.

Social Media — Comments
12
May 09

Twitter just made FriendFeed more valuable for me

In a rather strange and silent move, the Twitter honchos decided to tell you how to use Twitter. They’ve turned off the ability for you to see @replies to people you’re not following. So say for instance @shayera says something and I reply to her. Well, my handful of followers also following @shayera will see my response, but say @kspidel will not. Why? Because Twitter decided that was confusing for him.

Up until today, we had the option to see no @replies, only see @replies to yourself or see all @replies from your friends. The guys at Twitter thinks that made you all addlepated and shit:

We’ve updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback, we’ve learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow—it’s a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today’s update removes this undesirable and confusing option.

Confused? That’s understandable and exactly why we made the update.

Now, it’s one thing to remove a serviice without announcing it. It’s yet another to pull a service without soliciting any feedback from users, but when you post a half-assed vague blog entry like that, it just makes you look like an asshole.

Luckily, for me FriendFeed does show the @replies of your friends. So I’ve been seeing @shayera’s replies to people I don’t know. This is good because not only do I get to meet new people via her interaction with them, I just may even start following them. What’s more, I may even add them as friends on FriendFeed and see even more @replies.

UPDATE from Twitter on this mess.

Spotting new folks in tweets is an interesting way to check out new profiles and find new people to follow. Despite this update, you’ll still see mentions or references linking to people you don’t follow. For example, you’ll continue to see, “Ev meeting with @biz about work stuff” even if you don’t follow @biz. We’ll be introducing better ways to discover and follow interesting accounts as we release more features in this space.

In other words, you will still now know how your friends interact with someone else. You’ll see their name in an entry, but if your friend is directly talking to that person, you will not see it. Call me crazy, but a lot of cues on how we interact with each other are based on how our friends perceive someone. If I can’t see how my friend deals with a person how will I know if I want to follow them or not? It’s one thing to go to someone’s Twitter page and read their stream, but it’s an entirely different response to see how someone you trust interacts with that person.

Twitter would do best to put back our settings, forget about more useless features unless they’re giving us threading and groups and let allow us to modify our Twitter streams as we see fit.

Internet / meme — Comments
13
Feb 09

My Valentine’s Day Personality

Your Valentine’s Day Personality is Practical

As far as you’re concerned, Valentine’s Day is simply a commercial holiday.
You don’t place any real meaning on it. You don’t think it deserves too much celebration.

For you, Valentine’s Day is just the day you avoid restaurants and candy stores.
If you love someone, you already show it. You don’t need to go all out for a silly holiday to prove your love.

What’s Your Valentine’s Day Personality?

Internet / Social Media — Comments
8
Dec 08

Windows Live is doing it wrong

Last week, Microsoft opened up Windows Live, their answer to “social media”. Right off the bat, you can see why it’s a massive fail. Once you remember your Hotmail account from the mid-90s, use your Xbox or Zune login, you can see how the UI is very user-unfriendly. Importing feeds from other services is the only thing that’s quick and easy. However, if you want to add friends, you’re stuck with contacting them via Hotmail accounts that have long been deactivated or given over to spam. You can also add people via LinkedIn or Facebook, but that’s only provided those resources work. When I tested them last week, neither of them would invite contacts. This is fine with me as I don’t want my contacts from either site on this one.

Windows Live Home

This is your Home page. From here you can see what your friends are doing. What you can not do is actually interact with your friends on this page. So say I wanted to comment on Thomas’ photo, I can either click the Flickr link, hunt for the photo and make a comment or I can go to Thomas’s page, make a comment there and hopes he sees it.

Continue reading →

Advertising / Blogs / Females — Comments
16
Nov 08

Bitches Gone Wild: The Motrin Drama

Image via CrunchBase

Can you say stupid with a slice of WTF?

Last night, my Twitter started going off with angry tweets regarding an ad on the Motrin website. I can’t show you the ad because it’s been pulled. Let me describe it:

It was a way too long video with a voiceover of some whiny mom complaining about something. The words she was saying were being tossed acrossed the screen in what was probably some misdirected attempt at hipness. After I woke from a nap, the woman was still droning on and she started talking about how she uses a carrier (which somehow is painful) to make her look like an “official mommy”.

Let the shitstorm begin.

All day long, as I checked into various social media sites, women with too much time on their hands were writing overwrought posts talking about the ad was ‘insulting’. To whom, was unclear. Some moms were offended by it because they were adoptive parents. Some because their kids were older. Some because they never use(d) a carrier with their babies. Others because they know that if worn right a carrier isn’t painful at all. But they were insulted and seeking vengeance.

Insulted.

Mommy bloggers you won the internets today. Your prize?

Later this afternoon, childless people, men and those who have lives walked into this dust up trying to figure out the problem with the ad. Most of them realized quickly that the ad wasn’t anything to get upset about and moved on with their lives. Sadly, the mommy bloggers didn’t. They were making videos y’all. Videos.

THUD.

A few hours ago, the Motrin website went down. Crazed mommy bloggers cyber-high-fived one another. That’ll show Motrin. Mess with us and our faux outrage.

Well, Motrin finally responded and was a lot nicer than I would have been if I were doing the PR for the company:

We certainly did not mean to offend moms through our advertising. Instead, we had intended to demonstrate genuine sympathy and appreciation for all that parents do for their babies. We believe deeply that moms know best and we sincerely apologize for disappointing you. Please know that we take your feedback seriously and will take swift action with regard to this ad. We are in process of removing it from our website. It will take longer, unfortunately, for it to be removed from magazine print as it is currently on newstands and in distribution.

-Kathy

Kathy Widmer
VP of Marketing – Pain, Pediatrics, GI, Specialty
McNeil Consumer Healthcare

So now there’s even more vindication, but even worse, the masturbatory “See what Social Media can do?” posts are going up. It’s like a Daisy chain gone bad. And this is why I don’t call myself a mommy blogger. This is why I try to stay away from mom blogs. This is why some people shouldn’t be allowed to use a fucking computer.

I will say that I am extremely jealous at the swift and angry reaction of these women. Just think of what they could do if they organized to help the poverty-stricken or cure real injustices in the world. I wish everything in my life was so perfect that I would have the luxury to get all agitated over a damn ad.