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"I don't want to mention the person's name - it wasn't my real father - but somebody hurt my mom and me, I had to deal with that from seven all the way to 13. It affected me, especially (my behaviour) towards women - I treat them differently. I don't want to put a woman through the same thing that person put my mom through. I was scared and timid when I was little. I used to pee in my bed... I think it was me being nervous, and scared to get up (out of bed) and see what was going on. My mom used to try and hide it from me and my sister, but we knew. Anybody that's going through it, just try to deal with it, talk it out."
- Chris Brown, Nov 26, 2007
The cycle of domestic violence impressed upon by family leave it's filthy marks of disrespect and hate on impressionable young hearts and minds. This is an example of the extent of damage it can do others and to society, and a revelation that all kinds of people, even the best of us, can be victims of social injustice. Lets this serve as an example for all of us, to live in respect of others, just like we want to be respected.
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Some people think that smoking weed isn't that big of a deal, that it really doesn't do much harm to one's body and to society. It's actually an extremely huge deal because marijuana consumers keep drug cartels and smuggling going on, greatly increasing crime, illegal gun possession, collateral damages, major family conflict due to drug usage, impaired judgment, violence, deadly harm to police officers, and deficient morality. Even on an indirect level, the drug industry affects all of us, whether we have a friend who smokes weed casually or have a relative who has been killed as a result of drug relations, drugs are the corroding filth of our society, eating at our families like a cavity.
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"Artists" like Hilary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Heidi Montag have/have had record contracts, not for their singing/songwriting ability but for their marketability. Now Duff and Lohan have legit acting ability, no doubt, but I find it very hard to believe that they made an album solely to contribute their musical distinctiveness to the world; I find it easier to believe that they made their albums to diversify themselves and their careers.
I've been listening to Timbaland since I was in high school and have seen him progress from his distinctive bass-line hiphop beats to producing hits outside of his native genre of music. His musical productions are so amazing he often overshadows the headlining vocal artist on their Timbaland-produced single playing on the radio. Nowadays, he charges $100,000 to $300,000 per track! But with producers that have the golden touch comes a darkside of irresistible monetary offers to produce for non-musicians...
Big record companies, like Universal, Sony, Warner and Atlantic can get a pop icon totally unrelated to music like Paris Hilton, pay Timbaland $1,200,000 to $3,600,000 on executive production for 12 tracks of awesome music, have her sing and digitally correct her not-so-lovely ranges, strike a deal with a music distributor, get the marketing department going, hire a firm to design the album art and packaging, and BAM! You got yourself a hit album! The difference between Paris and me making the same album is that she's internationally marketable... but besides that, there's really no difference between one of us doing the vocals for the same body of work.
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"Even I don't wake up looking like Cindy Crawford."
This is Gisele Bündchen, born on June 20th, 1980, a Brazilian supermodel of German descent and is currently the highest paid and richest supermodel in the world. She has been the face of over 20 brands internationally and on more magazines covers than any other supermodel ever. Her resume at 28 years old overwhelming shows that she is the face of woman's beauty all around the world, and in a capitalistic POV, she can potentially obliterate all competition when she shows up on the scene. But in the same sense, capitalism promotes the ideas that someone's better and someone's worse, and that the person who's better is preferred over all the competition.
Beauty Bias, by Bonnie Berry, pg 101,
"Let us consider global standards of physical attractiveness. Looks standards... have become homogenized, globally, as white Northern European. This has wreaked havoc for the people of the world who do not have white Northern European features since they are pressured, if they wish to be economically and socially successful, to be slim, light-colored in skin and hair, and with Aryan facial structure."
The world is biased toward the Northern European standard of beauty, which means that all other forms of a woman that aren't conformed to this aesthetic are considered less attractive in the Western World. Many, many women try so hard to look like this standard by spending tons of money and credit on high end make-up, expensive brand name jeans, destructive hair appointments full of dyes and colors, personal trainers to get them "model" skinny, not to mention epidemics of liposuction, face-lifts, nose-jobs and botox to disfigure their faces to look Gisele-like. Imagine a Latina or black girl trying so hard to look like Gisele? They will never get there nor be satisfied because their biophysical origins are indigenous Native American or African. Regardless, these woman will go into self-destruction mode just to get the "optimum" figure, but little do they know that they are enslaved to the opinion of the professional modeling industry. In essence, the industry dictates what is beauty and definitely isn't, creating in women a loss of self-identity and replacing it with a(n) [insert brand name here]-identity, becoming their True Religion jeans, their Mercedes, their dyed blond hair.
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