Meet Krystal Ball(s)

By Rachel Salas
Published: December 02, 2010

Scandal! Reindeer nose! Dildo! All of these are the top key words associated with 28-year-old Democratic congressional candidate in Virginia, Krystal Ball. Yes, the election is over and done, but I can’t shake the bad feeling associated with malicious and extreme actions displayed by opposing candidates who run for office.

Never mind that this highly educated young woman was interested in making a change, let’s all focus on her pretending to suck on a reindeer nosed-dildo strapped around her ex-husband’s head in a photo taken at a Christmas party SIX YEARS AGO! Yes, that would make her 22 when the photo was taken. If the world knew the things I did when I was 22 years old, I wouldn’t be able to run for office or even be allowed in public. Who cares what the girl did when she was young!

Let’s be realistic: many of us have taken “compromising” photos at some point. And let’s be clear that the term compromising is used loosely. For the U.S. government, if you have taken a picture in anything but a pant suit with a straight expression on your face, you can forget about running for congress.

The moments of our past should not define us for eternity. Just because someone can have a good time doesn’t make them inadequate for a serious job. So what if she’s got a sense of humor?

If elected, Ball would have been the first woman under 30 to serve in Congress in history. This would be a huge accomplishment for women in her generation and for our nation.

Naturally shy by nature, Ball was humiliated by the photos that surfaced on a blog site closely related to her opponent, Republican Rob Wittman. The tactic for making female politicians look like whores is nothing new and certainly unoriginal. It’s just a way for men to feel more powerful by keeping women down.

Ball’s wrote on her website:

“I am a joke named Krystal Ball, a party girl or a whore. How did this happen? How did I end up with private photos of me at 22 with my ex-husband across the entire Internet, and in papers from London to New York to Boston? It’s not because people care about the Congressional race in the first district of Virginia or because of my positions on energy independence, school choice, marriage equality or pro-growth environmentalism. Here’s what happened…

Politics is a nasty game. I knew that coming in. I thought I could take it. But the day that I bought my first radio ads, my opponent called the station and inquired as to the size of the advertising buy. Two hours later, these photos were released by a right-wing smear blog with close ties to my opponent. I don’t believe these pictures were posted with a desire to just embarrass me; they wanted me to feel like a whore. They wanted me to collapse in a ball of embarrassment and to hang my head in shame. After all, when you are a woman named Krystal Ball, 28 years old, running for Congress, well, you get the picture. Stripper. Porn star. I’ve heard them all. So, I sat in my husband’s arms and cried. I thought about my little girl. I couldn’t stand the idea that I had somehow damaged the cause of young women running for office. I couldn’t stand the idea that I might shame my family, my friends or my supporters in some way.”

Ball argued that the leaking of the photos was sexist and would not be viewed the same way if it were a man in her shoes. I couldn’t agree more. Ball shouldn’t have been looked at in shame or worse, been punished for displaying sexual behavior when male politicians have done worse things… while in office, at that.

We can start with the most famous presidential scandal, called Bill Clinton. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” he declared to the world. According to Peter Tiersma, Clinton came back saying, “I thought the definition included any activity by me, where I was the actor and came in contact with those parts of the bodies” which had been explicitly listed (and “with an intent to gratify or arouse the sexual desire of any person”). Clinton denied that he had ever contacted Lewinsky’s “genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh or buttocks” and claimed that the agreed-upon definition of “sexual relations” included giving oral sex but excluded receiving oral sex.

Not to mention the infidelity scandals of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, and Eliot Spitzer.
The hypocrisy shown in today’s politics is outrageous. In a day and age where women have earned their equality, you would think that incidents like this one would cease to end. Well, get used to it fellas! We already had a woman run for president, so your centuries of reign will come to an end. But in the meantime you can make yourself feel better by exposing a young woman’s Christmas photos. Way to go, heroes of our nation!

Too much time online?

By Rachel Salas Published: October 06, 2010

Click, news feed. Click, top news. Click, messages. Click, events. Click, friends. Open Facebook chat. Click on Sally’s name to begin a chat. Now back to your homepage while Sally’s typing to you. Scroll to view whose posts interest you. Click on desired friends’ wall. Click on friends’ good-looking friends’ comment. View their profile. Click on mutual friends. Friend request them. Refresh homepage to see if you have any new notifications. Nothing. Now back to Sally.

The previous scenario is an everyday occurrence for millions of people across the world thanks to Facebook and other online communities. Online communities such as Twitter, Myspace, YouTube, Facebook and blog sites are dominating society’s spare time. Oh, wait. Hold on. I can’t finish this thought because I need to check my Facebook.

Okay, what was I saying? Ah, yes. We spend too much time on online communities. According to The New York Times, Facebook has 350 million members worldwide, who spend 10 BILLION minutes each day keeping tabs on friends, writing on each other’s walls and sharing videos, pictures and status updates. Twitter is another cyber beast that consumes everyday lives. People are compelled to share every moment of every day with the world, hoping that someone will care about the coffee that they’re enjoying at this very moment or the cutest thing their new Jack Russell Terrier just did.

According to Twitter’s measuring blog, Twitter has 500 million tweets per day, at approximately 600 tweets per second. Eleven percent of Twitter users in the U.S. are adults. Many people find it easier to communicate with others through the cyber world. And while it certainly is more convenient at times, it takes away from the beauty of meeting a person organically and feeling a real human connection.

Social scientists have adopted a term for incessant online contact called “ambient awareness.” Ambient awareness describes a person’s constant contact with friends, family and co-workers through social networking. Clive Thomas of the New York Times describes ambient awareness as being “very much like being physically near someone and picking up on their mood through the little things they do such as: body language, sighs, stray comments.”

Basically, friends who keep in touch with each other through social networking are aware of each other’s lives without actually being physically present to have a conversation. How did having human contact become so unappealing to us? Have we all become that disconnected from our own feelings?

Online communities are sucking the life out of us, and more importantly our younger generations. Remember the days when you were a kid and got home school and played handball on your garage with your friends or rode your bikes around the block until the sun went down? Now, children come home, do minimal amounts of homework and wait anxiously, like overly-caffeinated tweekers until they are able to log on to Facebook or Myspace to chat with their friends. Don’t parents understand that allowing this social barrier between others is going to set society’s future up to be socially aWkWaRd? I digress.

With the seven hours per week used on Facebook, I think we can all find more fulfilling things to do with our precious time. Looks like I’ll have to go look up some stuff to do on the Internet.

Calm down, she’s just being Miley

By Rachel Salas
Published: November 17, 2010

It seems as though the public is hypersensitive when it comes to young Disney stars growing up. Sorry folks, but young girls turn into women and women have the right to express their sexuality.

Britney Spears was the first Disney princess to seriously raise eyebrows with the release of her video, “I’m a Slave 4U” back in 2001, and now 17-year-old Miley Cyrus is the latest to shake up the media world with her becomingly sexualized video, “Who Owns My heart.” The music video showcases scenes of Cyrus in laced panties and a black tank top on a bed, as well as bearing her legs in a limousine. Yes, she’s a Disney product, but that doesn’t mean she can be Hannah Montana forever.

I suppose there’s no real transition from being an innocent TV star to a sexy bonafide pop star. It’s like a teenage boy getting underarm hair. He doesn’t realize it’s happening until one day it’s just there. It’s a part of growing up.

Plus, you don’t see the media scrutinizing young male artists who flaunt their sexuality. Four words for you: Justin Timberlake “wardrobe malfunction.”

What is up with the media obsessing over innocence in the entertainment industry anyway? It seems like an oxymoron.

The problem derives from society not knowing whether to treat teenage girls like smaller versions of grown women, that should still be monitored, or be treated like naive virgins in need of society’s protection.

What the media is missing is that teenagers are at a vital age, absorbing life lessons about love, morality, etc.; they are socially and intellectually curious. However, society is more focused on the fact that teenage girls wear short skirts and tank tops, and are beginning to experiment with sex.

Interest in sex is inherent in humans. Society can’t stop the process and shouldn’t want to. We should be more concerned with helping teens enter the adult world with good ethics and respect towards others.

According to Kaiser Family Foundation, 17.4 years is the “median age” for sexual intercourse in America, which means 62 percent of 12th graders have had sex.

In her article “Sex and the Highly Gifted Adolescent,” counselor Annette Revel Sheely said:

“Many parents find it difficult to acknowledge their adolescent’s emerging sexuality. Yet they are the very people who can be most influential in guiding their teen towards a positive adult sexuality.

In any family, this emergence can be quite a challenge. For families with highly gifted adolescents, however, it can be especially confusing. Some characteristics innate to the highly gifted can complicate an adolescent’s developing sexuality. These include asynchrony (either early or late sexual development), social isolation, sensual over- excitability and androgyny.

But gifted or not, and whether we are adolescent or older, sexuality is a central part of our identity and impacts how we interact with others and make use of our creative talents.”

Breaking away from the Disney mold is a difficult process. Cyrus is growing up and will no longer be that cute little girl that sings about her “papa’s brand new friend.” She’s nearly a legal adult and should not be scrutinized for growing up. Besides, aren’t Snooki and The Situation more fascinating people to ridicule?

Why it’s cool to be uncool

Published: September 22, 2010

Attention you hair-extension abusing, brand-name wearing, trendy hot-spot outing, expensive car-driving cool kids: it’s no longer cool to be cool.

The days of scantily clad clothing with Cosmopolitans in hand at your favorite night club are over. What was once deemed as chic and trendy a la Carrie Bradshaw, is now considered to be like Sex and the City: over and unable to redeem itself (although, lord knows it has tried).

What’s in instead? Being a nerd! Under-dressing, listening to obscure music, going to dive bars, playing Jenga, watching old movies, having feelings, reading books and playing video games is the new norm. Hipster has far surpassed the socialite in terms of coolness.

The media has had a field day in shaping what it is to be cool and uncool. How lucky these people are to have so much power over society. And now they are fucking with us by changing our perception of the matter.

Michael Cera is a prime example of dorky-cool displayed at its finest. Remember when men with feelings were considered to be sissies? And I’m putting that in the nicest way possible. Now, being soft-spoken, intellectual, quirky, sweet, musically-inclined and emotional are traits that have become cool for men to display. Women flock to men who are “deep” and see the beauty in life…cool guys, don’t scoff. You’re irrelevant now.

Ryan Seacrest was a self-proclaimed dork, although some would argue that not much has changed. Either way, this nerd has conquered the media world, one network and radio station at a time. “I was a fat kid that wore orthodontic head gear,” Seacrest said. I’m sure all the kids that bullied him in school are now bragging that they shared a dingy water fountain with him in PE class. I would.

Instead of going to a noisy house party and drinking yourself into oblivion, it’s cool to go to privately owned coffee shop in a quiet part of town, order a soy milk latte, eat a gluten-free pastry, and play video games on your computer.

And you can forget about watching a Drew Barrymore movie about falling in love and finding happiness. No, no, no. If you walk out of a movie and understand exactly what happened, you’re not going to be in the new in-crowd. It’s cool to see an independent film with little dialogue, where the emphasis is on character emotion. Ambiguity has taken over.

For decades, nerds have been shown in a negative light. Now, revenge of the nerds is in full-effect. So goodbye, Paris Hilton. Arrevadercci, Heidi Montag and au revoir, Kim Kardashian. See you later, flashy nightclubs and designer clothing. Hello, intelligence and art and welcome back, meaning and kindness, and salutations to everything thoughtful and independent. The rein of cool to be uncool has arrived!