something secret

Last week, I read a great article  by Nichole Perkins on Buzzfeed that talked about the way the character development of the leading ladies of both Scandal and Sleepy Hollow were working towards dismantling the harmful depictions of "strong black women" in media. It was a great read, and I loved that someone else shared my conclusions about Olivia Pope's characterization.  What stuck out to me however, was Perkins' characterization of Gabourey Sidibe's character Queenie  on American Horror Story Coven as a negative embodiment of the "strong black woman" stereotype. She says: "Then there is Gabourey Sidibe as Queenie on  American Horror Story: Coven , a “human voodoo doll” whose supernatural power is the inability to feel pain, even as she inflicts said pain onto someone else. [...]  These Strong Black Women feel no emotional pain, tolerate severe physical trauma with no reaction, and menace others with stone faces." I love American Horror Stor...

It's the finale! Here's the rundown: Sarah Jane  (wisely) decides to sign on as the face of Fantasy. I'm glad (though, not surprised) that she took it, because it's a great move for her. It's something she might actually be able to build a career on, as opposed to trying to wing it with her "Visa face". Working with Fantasy lets her do what she's always been doing (party, look cute) and make some money. It also lets her dip into planning events, which she's expressed a mild interest in. To me, it's a no-brainer. Have fun, get paid, add a few lines to your resume. Win-win! It was a very smart decision and I hope she finds success. I was amused though by the completely transparent way that she name dropped Anya. It's superficial on its face, and won't endear her to people outside her immediate social circle, but honestly, that's all tied up in the social politics of self in relation to race and class, but I won't say anything mor...

Alas, I'm late again! No shade, but I simply had better things to do than slave over a Glambition blog post... Whoops! In any case, I've watched the rest of the season, and I do some thoughts. Thoughts everywhere! Most of the drama this episode centered on a tiff between Isoke and Leah. Firstly, we see Leah house-hunting for a place closer to the heart of Port-of-Spain (the capital of Trinidad and Tobago) so that she can be closer to her business ventures. Predictably, she's caught between a place she loves and can't afford, and a places she can afford, but doesn't love. But, either way, she gave us the line of the night: "Champagne tastes with mauby pockets." Love it! I might have to take that as my personal motto, because lord knows  it describes my life! Later, Leah meets up with Bianca, and talks a little bit about being Ms. World, and her perception of Sarah Jane's distress that she can't "do anything" because people expect her to b...

Last night's episode of Scandal was too much to handle on a number of levels. There was a ton going on, and if you blinked too often you probably missed half of it. But what stood out the most to me this week, was the incremental development of the souring relationship between FLOTUS Mellie Grant, and her husband, POTUS Fitzgerald Grant.  At the beginning of the season, I made a case for why Mellie doesn't deserve the bad reputation she's gotten, and this week, I think we got a little more information to back up my case. Bellamy Young's fantastic performance gave Mellie an emotional depth that I'm so glad we're finally getting to explore.  Firstly, Mellie still loves Fitz. There is no question about that. It is fact, and it becomes even more obvious as the weeks roll by. For whatever reason, Mellie loves her abusive asshole of a husband, and she wants things to work out between them. To me this episode, specifically her drunk speech in the dining room, shows th...

I'm two weeks late on this review so I'll try to make it short and sweet. It helps that most of the focus this week on was the professional pursuits of the women, rather than on interpersonal drama. Thank God for small mercies. Let's get down to business. Isoke is still trying to position herself as a worthy successor to her father's business, and it seems as though she's getting considerable pushback from father's girlfriend. I appreciate that she's trying to step up. I don't know the history of her familial relations or the business' history, so I can't comment on whether or not she makes a good fit as a business leader, but she seems very determined to elevate the company from local parlour to international brand. That's exactly the kind of vision and forethought that you need in business, and it certainly tilts the scales in her favour. Isoke seems determined and driven, and that alone bodes well for her. Continue Reading My Brilliance! ...

It irks me that people (usually black men) keep saying that black women shouldn't love Olivia Pope because she is flawed. "Flawed" in this case usually equals "having an affair with a white guy". They don't realize it, but the concentrated hate that they hold for her is steeped in a very specific kind of racialized misogyny . Walter White was no hero, but somehow we managed to love him. Dexter was a serial killer  and yet, we lauded him too. What do they have in common? You guessed it. Men. White  men. Who also happened to be anti-hero characters whose virtues were valued alongside their flaws. But I'm going to set that aside for now. I'm a black woman and I LOVE Scandal. I am not blind to Olivia's flaws. I love her  because she has flaws.  Black women are so severely underrepresented in media that Kerry Washington's role has garnered a considerable amount of attention simply because she is a black woman in a lead role of a network televisi...

Like most true Scandal fans, I've re-watched both seasons of the show (twice!) in preparation for the glorious even that occurs tonight: the Scandal Season 3 premiere. Scandal is a show with many, many villains and very few true heroes, and that complexity has appealed to millions of people. The one thing that many people seem to agree on however, is the general terribleness of Mellie Grant, First Lady and wife to President Fitzgerald Grant; the man who is also Olivia Pope's lover. Audiences see Mellie as the obstacle keeping Olivia from her true love, and a bitch in her own right for her many behind the scenes machinations; both personal and political. But I have sympathy for her. I actually really like Mellie, and I think she's get an unfair level of hate. Hear me out: Mellie is definitely a problematic, sometimes amoral person. Remember Nobody Likes Babies ? But she's not the denizen of evil that people make her out to be. She's a complex character just as much a...

The theme of this week's episode is Girl, Bye . And yes, I'm talking to you Sarah Jane. I mean, I wasn't impressed with her last week , but this week she displayed a whole other level of.... self absorption that I just don't know what to do with her. It's weird for me to say that because Sarah Jane is my age. She's in a whole other bracket than I am financially, but I definitely understand that 20-something struggle of identity, direction and carving out a place for yourself in this world. I get the desperation to be successful and independent and financially stable. What I don't get is someone seeking validation for something that didn't actually happen to you. SJ's claim to fame locally is that she went up for Ms. T&T Universe. I suppose that means she considers herself a beauty queen as well as a socialite. In this episode, she asks Leah to meet up with her to "discuss her concerns" and commiserate I suppose with a fellow beauty quee...

Well, I had so much fun reviewing #CNTM that I'm back for more, this time with the new docu-drama Glambition , filmed in Trinidad, and airing Tuesday nights on Synergy TV. I didn't initially know a lot about the series, so I missed the initial pilot broadcast, but caught up later online. The 20 minute episode was.... interesting  to say the least. If I'm being honest? I wasn't impressed. The entire thing feels like a contrived, rehashed, bootleg version of The Hills, and that show got cancelled. The show is poorly edited, voice overs are stiltingly delivered, cuts are jumpy and obvious, transitions are jarring, there's a lot of repeated information.... production wise, it's a mess. And that's just the beginning. There is that strange stilted feeling throughout; cast members on budding realities shows tend to be hyper-aware of the camera's presence. The few actual conversations were constructed in such a way as to feel almost scripted. We've always k...

It's SUMMER TIME! Or, you know, Thursday for my local readers . Either way, the appropriate reaction is to... hole up in your room and binge watch television shows! Naturally. Thanks to the internet I watch approximately 500% more television than I used to, (conflicting schedules be damned!) and while it means I don't get nearly enough sleep, I've found a lot of great shows over the last few seasons. Some of these shows are available on Netflix, but a few of them are still in season one and aren't available yet. To catch up on those, you definitely shouldn't click here to watch them for free online under any circumstance.... So, anyway... this is my list of shows that you have to watch this summer because I want more people to talk about them with  because I said so. The list is arranged by "likelihood anyone reading this will actually start watching the show" ordered from least likely to most likely. These are all seriously great shows, and are some of m...

Arya Stark as a graffitti loving hipster via Moshi-Kun Do you love Game of Thrones, or do you LOVE Game of Thrones? While I haven't managed to catch up on this week's ( apparently tragic ) episode of #GoT yet, (Poor person with a basic cable budget, and a reporter's schedule. Judge me), these wonderful illustrations by Tokyo-based, French graphic designer, Mike Wroebel, are just enough to get me through another day of missing the epic-ness of the Red Wedding .  (And I accidentally glimpsed the lead-in to that article while I was pasting the link and now I know there was a massacre. SPOILERS EVERYWHERE! :/) This awesome illustration of badass Arya Stark was my favourite, but head over to his blog to check out other equally awesome illustrations of Daenerys Targaryen,   Brienne of Tarth , Jon Snow and a few others as super hipsters of the 80's. You won't be sorry. I promise! EDIT: I finally watched Sunday's episode and FUCK. Somebody should have prepared me for...

via  CNTM Stephany photographed by Pedro Virgil I'll spoil it for you now. Both Trudy and Susan were eliminated and only Stephany and Treveen remain. There really isn't much more to say about it other than that, so we'll skip straight to the recap. Stephany continues to surprise me. While I'm not completely convinced that she's ready for the kind of work that CNTM should  be preparing her for, she's been creeping up in the ranks. She improves every week, and  has been focusing on improving rather than interpersonal drama. She's slowly convincing me that she's a contender. This shot is one her strongest to date. It's dramatic and eye-catching, but I can't be sure that that is due to her skill as a model. I am confident that she has a future in modelling however. She has an incredible presence and continues to show that she would be pleasant to work with. Going into the finale, I'm cautiously putting my bets on Curacao. I'm beginning to th...

via CNTM A still from Stephany's winning CHI nailpolish commercial My biddies, I apologize for this very late review. This week has been hectic, and unfortunately it meant that CNTM dropped to the bottom of my list of priorities. I promise, I did not forget you. But since episode seven airs tonight, and as of yet the footage from the models' commercials has not been made available online, this will be a very abbreviated review. Honestly, the only thing I really  want to talk about this week was Athaliah's unceremonious ejection in favour of Susan in the bottom two last week. Now, Athaliah has garnered herself very few fans over the course of this season, and I would hardly count myself among them, but she did not deserve to be eliminated so early. That is simply a fact. And to send her home in favour of keeping a girl who has yet to take a good picture on purpose, well... I'm every bit as pissed as Athaliah must have been. I think we can all agree that Athaliah is an...

via  CNTM Trudy photographed by Calvin French I always start these posts off with a ton of preamble, and it makes the reviews rather long, so this week, I'm trying to make a conscious effort to cut down on the word count. But before I get to the reviews, I want to call attention to something that I'm sure went over most people's heads: this entire shoot was done in redface, and that is NOT OKAY . Naturally I blame the producers of the show for not thinking, even for a second, that this might be problematic, but I'm a little disappointed that none of the girls pointed it out. (Or maybe they did and it was edited out? Let's pretend that happened.) Other people have said it more eloquently than I, (specifically as it relates to Native Americans in the US, however the lesson translates well) but the basics are this: to be Amerindian is an identity. It is not a costume. It is the very essence of who the indigenous people are. To reduce their existence to a homogeneous ...

It's been a week, and the season finale of GIRLS was still a little more than I can handle. After  On All Fours,  and all of the spectacular shame spiraling that occurred, I was weirdly looking forward to some season-ending closure for these girls: some indication that they had learned something from this season of hardship and emotional struggle. But, nope. All we got was more of the same. Hannah's self indulgence, Marnie's near deliberate obtuseness, Shoshanna's innocence (more on this in a bit), and Jessa's flightiness. The finale made sense in the context of this season's larger story arcs, but it leaves the audience, (okay, me) with a sense of dissatisfaction. With the exception of Shoshanna, each of the players is essentially right back where they started in the pilot, and it feels like regression much more than progress. Continue Reading My Brilliance! >>>

via  CNTM Stephany photographed by Marvin Bartley This week was... interesting. There were a lot of problems that had nothing to do with the girls, but can we just agree that the drama between them is just too draining to be worth mentioning anymore? Kendra, you are not humble if you talk about how humble you are. Athaliah, someone not asking excuse, while rude, is not a capital offense. Calm down. Lisa, stop with the passive-aggressiveness. It's not cute. And all of you, leave poor Treveen alone please. There's a reason she's shooting past the rest of you while you battle for a spot in the bottom two. Top Model is a  family franchise . There is no reason TV6 should have to place a parental guidance warning before the show. Tone it down ladies.  But as we mention the bottom two, can we please discuss how completely messed up the call out order was this week?  AGAIN?  Somebody on that judging panel is hitting that Jesus Juice a little hard. I won't say who, but it rhymes...

via  CNTM Treveen photographed by Kerron Riley Oh my darling biddies, I'm sorry to say that I missed everything but the judging this week, so I have little to say about the models' interpersonal drama. Unfortunately that means that this week, I'll have to base this review exclusively on the their performance in the photoshoot. I know! Comment très ennuyeux! But that can't be helped. Let's get on with it.  It seems Treveen has once again found herself at the top of the pack and with good reason! This shot has all the  Charima Uniquness Nerve and Talent  you could ask for. Treveen is engaged with her body and in her face, she's interacting with the other characters in frame, and she still manages to stand out amongst all the feathers. I can easily see this as an ad for Trinidad Carnival, as it fantastically captures the idea of interacting with a new culture, while also being wary of it. In this shot, Treveen has accomplished the near impossible: she looks demure ...

via  CNTM This week's winning photograph Treveen photographed by Andros Belfonte Firstly: I TOLD YOU BITCHES IT WOULD GET BETTER! This week we saw improvements in almost every aspect of the show (except the damn sound editing. *shakes fist*) from the judging sets, to the girls' house, to the girls themselves in the form of makeovers. Sadly, Wendy was still gorgeous and still boring, and the final call-out order was an absolute mess, but we did finally get a clear picture of the prizes: a US$50K contract with bmoblie, a cover and feature spread in Caribbean Belle Magazine and a modelling contract with Factor Women. But it was makeover week, so naturally there were tears and complaints, but other than Kendra, no one seemed to have any serious traumatic experiences. In general the makeovers were pretty great, but the colours were mostly atrocious. None were truly terrible, but there were only a handful of standouts. (See Treveen, Trudy, Lisa, Susan) Everyone else looked different,...

via CNTM The Winning Photograph, featuring Trudy and Susan photographed by David Wears So… almost an entire week has passed and I’m just getting to this review. It’s a little bit laziness and being busy at work, but it’s mostly my complete and utter inability to make heads or tails of what happened on Monday.  And I’m not talking about what happened in the episode. But first, the task at hand: A few minutes in, Rachel opted to leave to take a job she had interviewed for prior to making it into the competition. Power to you girl. Go make that money. Modelling may seem glamorous and fun, but it can take years before you hit a stride and make the kind of living you want. In the spirit of fairness, model hopeful Lisa was invited to take her place. With that all sorted, the journey continued. There was some screaming, two gorgeous male models, arrival at their new accommodations (a drastic, minimal, military style barracks) and commentary on who is or isn’t “real”, who causes comess, and wh...

Let me first preface this review by saying that I am not a model, have never been a model, and have no intentions of ever being a model. (I mean really. At 5'2" I don't stand a chance) What I am,  is someone with a vested interest in fashion and the fashion industry, especially locally, and an avid, nay obsessive  viewer of ANTM. I even watched the British Invasion season. It's that serious. So I do feel qualified to comment on this latest iteration of the ANTM franchise, and frankly, there's quite a lot to discuss. Continue Reading My Brilliance! >>>