cuteness – CircuitouslyCute

Domestic Labor and Pandemic

March 21, 2020July 9, 2021 by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in age, captions, sketch comedy, civic culture, civics, cute, cuteness, design, domestic, domestic labor, ethos, family, feminism, media, pandemic, parenting, professional writing, professionalism, psychology, rhetorics, sex & sexuality, sexual politics, Social Media, space, space & spatiality, spatial justice, spatial rhetorics

Welcome to the brave new world of cleaning up after yourself and no longer burdening black women with the unpaid labor and invisible upkeep of taking care of your personal hygiene and sanitation. Get used to cleaning up after your own damn self because we’re all nursemaids now.

Neither race, gender, class, nor your professional status will protect you from having to pitch in and handle your share of the dirty work. Wipe down that counter and polish away those smears. Not only will your work be invisible, but you’ll have to try and look good while performing it since, now, your life probably depends on it. It’s only what black women have been doing for free for the last four centuries.

So hop to it! There’s plenty of unseen, undervalued work for everybody to do.

Animal>>> Cyborg>>> Machine (2009)

December 4, 2019December 4, 2019 by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in #BlackLivesMatter, #ProfessionalBlackGirl, African Americans, art, automation, Blackness, blogging, civic culture, comics, communication, persuasion, politics, teaching, professional writing, composition, computers, cuteness, cyborgs, design, ethos, family, fashion, feminism, film, gender, higher education, hip-hop, information design, LGBT, rhetorics, robotics, science, sex & sexuality, sexual politics, sexual politics, space & spatiality, spatial justice, spatial rhetorics, style, technology, time & temporality, visual literacy, whiteness studies

This video is much racier and sleeker than the previous montage vid I posted; more sound effects and video clips.

Professional Black Girl: Video Series Celebrates ‘Everyday Excellence’ of Black Women

September 9, 2016September 9, 2016 by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in #ProfessionalBlackGirl, African Americans, beauty, communication, persuasion, politics, teaching, professional writing, composition, cute, cuteness, design, digital literacy, ethos, fashion, feminism, feminity, gender, hair, media, play, politics, professionalism, race, rhetorics, sexual politics, style, technology, video, visual literacy, YouTube

Professional Black Girl: Video Series Celebrates ‘Everyday Excellence’ of Black Women and Girls and explores the love language shared by black women, and how we twerk and work with unmatched professionalism.

Episode 1

#ProfessionalBlackGirl

blog

DURHAM, N.C. — Dr. Yaba Blay, renowned activist, cultural critic, and producer, launches Professional Black Girl, an original video series created to celebrate everyday Black womanhood, and to smash racist and “respectable” expectations of how they should “behave.”

Seventeen Black women and girls ranging in age from 2- to 52-years-old were interviewed for the series. Each episode features a candid discussion with personalities such as Grammy Award-winning recording artist, Rapsody; Joan Morgan, author of the Hip-Hop feminist classic When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost; and 13-year-old world traveler Nahimana Machen, sharing what it means to be a “Professional Black Girl.”

“‘Professional Black Girl’ looks like Taraji P. Henson at the 2015 Emmys jumping up to hug Viola Davis. It looks like Mary J. Blige and Taraji and Kerry Washington in that Apple commercial. It looks like me rolling up to a room full of people in Berlin to speak with my bamboo earrings on,” explains Tarana Burke, a non-profit consultant and fashion blogger featured in the series.

Limited edition Professional Black Girl merchandise, created in partnership with Philadelphia Printworks, is available now onphiladelphiaprintworks.com. The first full episode, featuring Dr. Blay, will air September 9, 2016, with an episode airing each Friday onYouTube and yabablay.com until December 23, 2016.

“The terminology that is often used to describe and define Black girls—such as bad, grown, fast, ghetto, and ratchet—are non-affirming and are words that are intended to kill the joy and magic within all Black girls,” says Dr. Blay. “We are professional code-switchers, hair-flippers, hip-shakers, and go-getters. We hold Ph.Ds and listen to trap music; we twerk and we work. We hold it down while lifting each other up, and we don’t have to justify or explain our reason for being. This is us.”

Follow #ProfessionalBlackGirl across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to celebrate and affirm the everyday excellence of Black women and girls.

For more information, or to interview Dr. Yaba Blay, please contact Shakirah Gittens at 718-687-6231 or by email at info@DynamicNLyfe.com.

The Battle for Equality Is a WIRED Issue

October 28, 2015December 22, 2015 by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in #BlackLivesMatter, African Americans, athletes, beauty, Blackness, communication, communication, persuasion, politics, teaching, professional writing, computers, cute, cuteness, digital literacy, education, gender, information design, photography, politics, race, rhetorics, Serena Williams, social media, sports, style, technology, visual rhetoric

Serena Williams isn’t just a tennis champion and singularly great athlete; she’s been a leader in the fight for equal representation and pay in her sport.

Source: The Battle for Equality Is a WIRED Issue

Cute Coping: Invention & Writers’ Lifehacks

June 16, 2015August 31, 2015 by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in computers, cuteness, Invention

My “transoffice” is what I call all the little tricks I’ve adopted to keep my mobile devices on the ready for whatever. Whether biking downtown to the coffee shop or heading to the beach with the kids, the proliferation of proprietary cords and adapters for my laptop, smartphone, and tablet are mainstays of my workplace habitus — for good or bad. This work/play approach seems unavoidable and developing lifehacks designed to keep gadgets safe and organized is indispensable.

It’s hard out here for a yuccie trying to keep up with these never ending workloads. The idea of “presence bleed” is no joke in this information economy.

Yet another iteration of cuteness, creative professionals find themselves in constant pursuit of cute objects they can deploy to this end. The cute aesthetic works as a strategy for managing this contemporary moment of economic and social instability. It’s a shared reality that we cannot seem to avoid. And so I cope… by not only writing about it but also performing it on a daily basis, either consciously or unconsciously (even now — at this very moment while tapping out this post on my shiny new iPhone Plus :~)

At any rate, I thought I’d share this minor invention I came up with in the hopes that it might help some of you organize your hectic lives while trying to keep it cute.