There’s No Crying In Basketball?

There’s No Crying In Basketball?
What The Heat’s Tears Say About Masculinity & Emotion
by Jamilah Lemieux

I don’t follow sports much, but my beau is a hoops fanatic. I decided that, better than to be a ‘basketball widow’ this season, I might as well learn to appreciate the game and watch along with him from time to time. Between him, his friends and the interesting folks that I follow on Twitter, I’ve heard a lot about Miami Heat player Chris Bosh. More than people speak about his abilities on the court, they mention his tendency to cry after games and his recent remarks about the importance of “man hugs”. I don’t think you need two guesses to figure out what kind of response that’s gotten him from the young brothers out here.

Le sigh.

I understand that the idea of a grown man crying publicly and advocating for man-on-man affectionate touch makes many people uncomfortable, but I think that’s sad. Men–Black men in particular–aren’t typically granted the space to be emotional or affectionate. They aren’t allowed to express their feelings in the ways that women are. How many times have you heard even very young boys told to stop crying and “man up”? In a particularly tragic incident last year, a Long Island man beat his 17-month old son to death in a failed attempt to get him to ‘toughen up’.

I’ve often heard activist and writer Kevin Powell discuss the misnomer that men simply aren’t as emotional as women; since they aren’t given the freedom to cry or speak at length about their feelings, they often times express them through yelling or violence. I’m inclined to agree. While I do understand that there may be some inherent differences between the sexes (and no universal pattern of behavior that defines either of them), it seems apparent that we dehumanizing our men with the expectation that they remain ‘hard’ at all times.

Read the Full Essay @ Clutch Magazine

What Does It Take to Publish a Successful Digital Magazine?

Running an online magazine is rewarding, hard work

Clutch Founder/Editorial Director Deanna Sutton:
What Does It Take to Publish a Successful Digital Magazine?
by Felicia Pride

I don’t know when I first was introduced to Clutch magazine. But instantly I thought three things: dope + necessary+ finally. Under the passionate tutelage of founder and editorial director, Deanna Sutton, and under the banner ushering in the new era for young, contemporary women of color, Clutch represents an important model in digital publishing entrepreneurship—finding a need, successfully filling that need with high quality design and content, and connecting with your audience, sincerely at your home base and through social media. As a result, the magazine has accumulated a steady increase in viewers every quarter since its inception.

BackList caught up with the crazy busy Sutton to gain insight into her day-to-day, future goals for Clutch, and why tough skin is an essential trait for publishers.

BackList: What did you do in your previous life?

DS: I was in marketing and public relations for some top PR agencies and brands.

BackList: When did you first visualize Clutch?

Deanna Sutton: I first visualized Clutch in 2002 after I lost my father suddenly. I was in a deep state of depression and through an encounter with my best friend on the state of magazines for women our age, the idea was born. We started as print and re-launched as an online magazine in April 2007.

BackList: At one point, you were sort of running Clutch as a one-woman show. What was that like on a daily basis?

DS: I am blessed to have great friends, writers and supporters that helped a lot when Clutch first launched in 2007. But, yes up until about a year ago I was posting, assigning, publicizing and more for Clutch. No life.

BackList: Now that you have a team working with you, how have things changed?

DS: It’s still very hard. Coming up with content that our readers will like is extremely difficult. Our readers are one of a kind and expect nothing but the best and hold us accountable if we don’t give that. I still do everything I did before, now I just have some help.

BackList: Who is a Clutch reader and how did you finally profile her?

DS: The Clutch reader is extremely intelligent, fashionable, aware, social and progressive. It took me about 2 ½ years to figure out what our readers wanted and who the Clutch woman was. It took lots of chances on the content – from focusing on celebrities to fashion and beauty to finally commentary that matters to us. I am so not into celebs like that and I didn’t want Clutch to be stans for celebrities.

Read the Full Interview @ theBackList

On Female Masculinity

Female masculinity remains a touchy issue for many women, mainly because it often intersects with hard conversations about gender and sexuality norms. Yet this conversation is necessary and also represents a reflection of the deepest fears about ourselves.

Female Masculinity:
Disrupting Standards of Beauty and Redefining Womanhood
by Arielle Loren

When I declare, “I am a beautiful woman,” what image comes to mind? Am I smoothly brown-skinned with a figure 8 frame? Am I thin with a flat stomach? Am I stunning with some extra curves?

What about if I have arms of Kobe Bryant? Or the legs of Usain Bolt? Can I have the jaw line of Barack Obama?

Would I be “woman” enough for you? Perhaps, you wouldn’t call me a woman at all. You’re not alone and I’m not pointing the finger. Womanhood and femininity remain inextricably intertwined causing female masculinity to be outside the norm. Thus, your visual discomfort is expected.

The truth is that I don’t have the characteristics of Bryant, Bolt, or Obama. I probably look like your stereotypical image of a “beautiful” Black woman (with a crazy afro); however, I know women who look the opposite. The need to redefine beauty standards and womanhood goes beyond “liberal” ideology and discussion. It’s about women’s empowerment, self-confidence, and inclusion. It’s about recognizing that not all women, even if solely a minority, have to look like each other. It’s bigger than the discourse of body image and weight in popular culture. This is the need to confront the taboo of female masculinity and pay homage to all the women who have lived outside the standard of beauty for too long. In fact, we should chuck the standard all together.

Female masculinity remains a touchy issue for many women, mainly because it often intersects with hard conversations about gender and sexuality norms. Yet this conversation is necessary and also represents a reflection of the deepest fears about ourselves.

Read the Full Essay @ Clutch Magazine

NBM Saturday Edition: The 'Essence' of Our Blackness?

NBM Saturday Edition
The ‘Essence’ of Our Blackness?
by Mark Anthony Neal

I first started reading Essence Magazine as a 16-year-old living in the Bronx. Of course I was initially drawn to the magazine because of the pretty black women within its pages, but the magazine, then under the direction of Susan Taylor, offered so much more for my burgeoning political sensibilities. Building on an editorial foundation laid out by Marcia Ann Gillespie—who would later edit Ms. Magazine--the Essence Magazine that existed in the early 1980s was where I would be first introduced to Audre Lorde, via a published conversation between Lorde and James Baldwin. It was in the pages of that Essence that I got updated on the political exploits of Kwame Toure (Stokley Carmichael) and provided a portrait of Louis Farrakhan before the controversies associated with Jessie Jackson’s first presidential campaign in 1984. I came of age thinking that Essence Magazine in contrast to Ebony magazine, was my magazine—Black America’s magazine. That the magazine was black owned and black directed only added to its allure. That Essence magazine hasn’t existed for a long, long time.

Essence Magazine has been in the news recently because of its decision to hire the magazine’s first white fashion editor. Former Essence fashion editor Michaela angela Davis perhaps captured initial emotions best, telling Clutch Magazine “I feel like a girlfriend has died.” But beyond this sense of loss, what really is at stake when a “black” magazine, no longer black owned, but still critically representative to our communities’ sense of themselves, simply becomes another periodical. Is there a response beyond simply decrying an editorial decision, that more or less is fully in-line with the magazine’s general editorial direction for the last decade?

One of the by-products of the Obama era is that there has been added pressure on black institutions to show that they are as progressive as the whites, who broke racial ranks to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential election. Part of the initial response to the Shirley Sherrod controversy was rooted in this idea that Black America was to hold themselves as accountable for racist behavior as they hold whites accountable. It is in this context that CNN and TVOne contributor Roland Martin has suggested that Essence Magazine’s decision to hire Ellianna Placas as fashion editor is evidence of their “progressive” racial politics.



But there is nothing progressive about whites directing or overseeing black intellectual and cultural production. Historically, as journalist Esther Armah has suggested, whites have always been in position to sign off on how Blackness would enter the marketplaces of consumption and public opinion. Indeed what generated pride within Black America when Essence Magazine was launched in 1971 was the idea that this it offered an opportunity for black control of black imagery. As such the idea of a white fashion editor at Essence or a black themed magazine owned by a white owned global corporation seems too much like a long established status-quo, as opposed to anything that needs to be celebrated or worse still, labeled as progressive.

But the decision by Essence Magazine also speaks volumes about a general trend that challenges the professional capabilities of black women. When Honoree Fanonne Jeffers laments that “Essence started using any excuse to erode Black women’s sense of strength” she captures the sense of betrayal that black women have experienced, in relation to their partnerships with black men and the broader professional world. In the backdrop of a solitary white woman serving as fashion editor for a formerly black owned magazine, is the fact that black women are marginalized in the editorial leadership of mainstream journals and magazines, a state that is far more deserving of public outrage than the hiring of said solitary white woman at Essence Magazine.

To echo Jeffers’s point, in the decade since Time Warner acquired 49% of Essence Magazine, purchasing the remaining 51% in 2005, the magazine’s editorial direction seems intent on damaging the emotional psyches of black women and girls, if only present itself as the self-help haven for those same black women and girls, in an attempt to increase the magazine’s circulation. This is a time tested strategy in magazine culture, which in concert with the advertising industry, have actively sought to sell magazines to women by highlighting their imperfections—literally from the highlights in their hair to the shade of their toe-nails. All magazines have concerns about circulation, but what made Essence Magazine so special is that it was always above simply selling magazines.

Now Essence is just another magazine (like BET is just another television network) and our response to its on-going editorial direction, should reflect just that. The glossy colorful print gems that so many of us read, even a decade ago, reflect an industry trying to hold on to its past. The future has long been in social media and the blogosphere, where black women have been able—more than in any historical period—to fashion a view of themselves that they can take ownership of. This a point that commentator Felicia Pride recently made at theLoop21.com where she wrote, “I turned to the Internet and found online publications like Clutch…the online magazine is focused on ‘ushering in the new era for young, contemporary women of color.’ Visually appealing. Wide-ranging. Multicultural. Forward-moving. Me. And so many others like me.” 



“Girlfriend” has died—we can mourn her, lament her passing, but now we must move on.