31. teenager on the inside. hopeless romantic. believes in the best in people. lover of fashion. devout reader. adores all things cute. desperate to travel. a brooklyn girl to the core.
She’s the right age to fit into the Batfleck timeline, a total goddess, could totally kick Batfleck’s ass and he’d thank her for the privilege and we know she’s great at both action and being classy as fuck.
Just imagine BatCat played not as a budding almost romance but as a romance that has been, she knows every trick in his book and she knows when to play him and when to stand on principle and help out, like an amicably divorced couple.
Last night’s Insecure finale ended with both a bang (Lawrence finally deciding to take Tasha the bank teller up on her, um, offer) and a whimper (Issa’s couch cry in Molly’s arms); culminating a season unlike any other I’d seen on network or cable TV. Of course, we’ve seen shows where friendships between Black women served as the show’s creative fulcrum — one of which was literally called Girlfriends. We’ve also seen love triangles, love trapezoids, love flow charts, and love Venn diagrams. Issa’s back and forth with Daniel and Lawrence, while compelling, wasn’t necessarily new. And although both Issa’s and Molly’s relationships with their well-meaning but oblivious non-Black co-workers — interactions which vacillated from absurd to “Are you fucking kidding me?” — was perhaps the “realest” part of the show (and my personal favorite) we’ve seen that before too. In fact, we see it every Wednesday on Blackish.
What I haven’t actually seen before — and this is with 30 years of TV watching — is a show that literally showed so many Black bodies in various stages of undress having sex. It wasn’t just alluded to hinted at or implied. We actually saw Issa fucking and Daniel fucking and Lawrence fucking and Jared fucking and Molly fucking. We saw Black asses and Black titties. We heard the shit talking and the skin smacking. We felt that shit. And there was a diversity both within the actual sex and the message the sex meant to communicate. The season’s longest and most passionate love making scene (Issa and Daniel’s studio hookup) was immediately preceded by the audience reflexively cringing — knowing exactly what was about to happen — and immediately followed by Issa’s post-sex mirror glow-up and subsequent rush of shame. It was used to hilarious effect with Jared and Molly’s hook-ups. It was employed multiple times to communicate Issa and Lawrence’s still-very-awkward reconciliation; none better than their feeble attempt at post-workout shower sex (which, for the record, is always fucking awkward). We saw make-up sex and the sex scene to conclude the season, which can best be categorized as (back-breaking) break-up sex. We saw (lack of) sex used as a synopsis of a relationship’s poor health, and a sexual history used as grounds for dismissal. It was used to console and to reconsider and to crush. We saw blow jobs. We saw pussy eaten. We saw blue balls. We even saw a Black strip club, with realistic-looking Black strippers and an extremely sobering (for Lawrence, at least) exchange about the blunt sexual currency within the club.
Of course, sex on TV isn’t new. It’s definitely not new on HBO. From Dream On and First and 10 and True Blood to Real Sex and Tell Me You Love Me and even Game of Thrones, HBO has never shied away from showing people having sex on screen. Girls — which probably should just be renamed White Girls Having Bad Sex In Brooklyn — wields and incorporates sex the same way Insecure has.
But Black people having sex — and having that sex run the gamut from mundane and matter-of-fact to explicit and explosive — has remained somewhat taboo in mainstream media. And a not-at-all-insignificant reason for this taboo is that our bodies are still considered to be more pornographic than our White counterparts. This makes Black sex scenes seem more obscene, a dynamic Wesley Morris explored last month:
There’s a more pernicious problem at work here, too. The underrepresentation of the black penis bespeaks a larger discomfort with depicting black male sexuality with the same range of seriousness, cheek and romance that’s afforded white sexuality. The history of American popular culture is an immersion in, if not loving white people, then knowing that white people can love.
Although his piece focused more on Black male sexuality — pop culture’s relationship with the Black penis specifically — much of the same could be said about America’s relationship with Black sex in general. With Insecure however, Issa Rae subverts this expectation, creating a show that seems to exist refreshingly oblivious to this historical context. Knowing how long this show took to develop and produce — and knowing Rae’s history and how in tune she is to our cultural zeitgeist — I have no doubt that this obliviousness was intentional. That she’s very aware of the existence of this context — of our country’s uneasiness with Black bodies and Black sex — and intended to confront and eschew it.
I believe she knew this would be revolutionary. And all she had to do was be real.
I read The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl a couple of months ago, and she talked about how when she was a teenager she wrote to Gina Prince-Bythewood about how important Love & Basketball was to her, and how inspired she was, and how she hoped Gina Prince-Bythewood would direct one of her scripts one day. And then I remembered the Gina Prince-Bythewood interview in the movie This Film is Not Yet Rated, and she talked about how the MPAA rejected Love & Basketball and how she had to edit it, and how she inferred (obviously, correctly) it was not only the depiction of Black sex, but also of a Black woman showing sexual pleasure. When I watched the sex scenes in Insecure, I was sort of excited to see that direct line from Issa Rae being inspired by Gina Prince-Bythewood, GPB facing racist censorship, and IR being able to bring those depictions onto the screen. Just really cool and powerful to see.
Please give me all the advice you have on writing cover letters. Like, the closer you can get to literally just writing a cover letter for me, the better. Ok bye.
This is how I did the one for my librarian position. I hope it helps.
Dear Person Hiring for this Job,
I am writing to ask you to consider me for X position. This is a paragraph about why I want to do X position in general. It includes at least one personal detail and at least one job skill I consider a particular strength. It argues that I am passionate about this career. It is not long.
I have had the opportunity to gain experience in this job by - paragraph about my work or study experience. It should go from most recent experience back. Include some details about your responsibilities/achievements in your most recent or most important positions. If you have mostly study experience, give more detail about what exactly you studied. If you shadowed people, mention that. If your work experience is largely unrelated, try to shoehorn some of it in (e.g. I gained experience working with people by). You can supplement with relevant hobbies. (But if you do have recent, relevant work experience, you should largely be detailing that. Only embroider the other stuff if you need to flesh it out.) This should be the longest paragraph.
I hope you will consider allowing me to do X thing at your company. This is a few sentences about why I want to work at your company in particular and what I think I could bring. Try to mention at least one detail from the company website, so they know you visited it. This is a short paragraph that parallels the first one.
Thank you very much for your time and attention.
Sincerely,
Person You Would Be a Fool Not to At Least Interview
oh my god thank you this is relevant to current interests
Two other points, to challenge what’s being said above a little:
1) Remember that the person reading this cover letter wants to know how you can contribute to the company. Not how excited you are about the position: it’s all about what they gain. Try framing the whole thing in that sense — “You would gain my X awesome skill that would help you Y with your mission.” “Here’s why I’m awesome and a great fit for making your company go better.”
2) At the end, ask for the interview. “I am available at PHONE NUMBER at your convenience. I look forward to speaking with you about this great opportunity soon.” Maybe even say you’ll be following up at a specific time and date. Ask for the job. People respond to that, and it’s a good way to fake confidence until you make it. Ask for the job.
Okay, three points. People reading cover letters get SO BORED going through them. Think about starting off with a story that relates to why you’re interested in the job, or that demonstrates a skill or a strong interest that would make you a good candidate. Be memorable — people remember stories, even (maybe especially) very little ones.
*hoards advice*
Reblogging valuable info. I would even add that the example length in the original post is a tad too long - especially if you are applying to a company/agency/organization that does not have dedicated HR staff. The busy mid-level manager flipping past your letter at breakneck speed amongst the 8,000 other emails in their inbox will glaze over at the eyes at a paragraph longer than 4-5 lines. Brevity is power!
Dark Horse is releasing a Buffy The Vampire Slayer adult coloring book come January. This winter, you can enjoy 45 pages of intricately detailed scenes from the hit series. You can color in Buffy, Willow, Xander, and the rest of the Scooby Gang as well as beloved villains like Spike &…
Me for the past 20 years: I don't know about the Pokemon universe, it just seems so implausible that everything about their society would become so overly focused on Pokemon that every aspect of their lives would revolve around them in every conceivable capacity. Me over the past week: Oh.
