Yoga Teacher Dianne Bondy (photo via black doctor.org)
Not only do some people believe plus size women shouldn’t do yoga, but also that plus size women are physically unable to do yoga, simply because of their size. It should go without saying that’s completely untrue, but sometimes people won’t believe it until they see it. In less than 60 seconds, acclaimed yogi Dianne Bondy sets the record straight in a new video created by The Penningtons Blog.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnkG8U5WCwY&w=560&h=315]
The video is a beautiful work of inspiration and encouragement for plus size women who’ve been shamed from practicing yoga, never daring to step foot in a class because of what others might say or because of that quiet but ever-present critical voice in their head that believes maybe yoga isn’t for them.
When Bondy posted the video to her Facebook page she wrote:
There was a time that I would have mortified to see my big body on film. I would criticize my weight, my size, my arms just everything! Today I am all about radical self- love. RADICAL SELF-ACCEPTANCE. I will no longer apologize for my body, for my size and for who I am. I stand in my power! I AM ENOUGH! I AM GOOD ENOUGH! Let’s stand up together! We are WORTHY
The video is part of Pennington’s new #iwontcompromise movement “that celebrates doing what we love, wearing what makes us feel good, and being who we are without compromise. No limits, no fears, no judgments, just pure enjoyment,” the website explains.
Whether you’re into yoga or not, complete self-acceptance is something we ALL should get into. Check out the video above and be inspired. article by M. Brooks via blackdoctor.org
Stuart Scott and daughters Taelor and Sydni Scott (photo via eurweb.com)
As a tribute to the iconic sports broadcasting personality, Stuart Scott‘s daughters have released a heartfelt video in remembrance of him today on the one-year anniversary of this death.
“He was a father, but he was also a friend,” 20-year-old Taelor Scott says in the three-minute video. “I feel like I’ve lost a friend.”
Scott died on January 4, 2015 after a lengthy battle with cancer. A storied ESPN and SportsCenter host, millions around the world were inspired by his perseverance and bravery.
“From you, Dad, we’ve learned to reach for the fight we possess inside and apply it with passion to our lives,” his daughters, who Scott referred to as his “heartbeats” wrote in an open letter. “It was through your vulnerability that you taught us the real value of strength in never giving up.”
Watch their moving video below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz5RpjFHGDU&w=560&h=315] article via eurweb.com
According to CNN Money, the former heavyweight champion signed a multi-year deal with lifestyle clothing maker Under Armour.
Not only is Under Armour allowed to use Ali’s name for the brand, they will use historic video clips and his famous quotes.
Under Armour released a statement about the deal with the boxing legend. “Ali is one of the most recognized and celebrated figures of all time.”
Although Ali seems to be too old for endorsement deals, according to Yahoo! Finance’s Jeff Macke he relates well with older generations of men.
“Guys my age still love him. For guys over 40, Ali sells a lot of stuff,” says Macke. article via blackamericaweb.com
Chance The Rapper (photo via eurweb.com)
Need a source of holiday inspiration? Try Chance the Rapper.
According to Mic.com, the Chicago rhymesayer is making it his business to bring at least 1,000 coats to his city’s homeless population via a recent partnership with the Empowerment Plan, a Detroit-based nonprofit organization that employs homeless people from local Detroit shelters to create long, self-insulating coats that transform into sleeping bags and totes.
The project, known as Warmest Winter, launched Wednesday (Dec. 21) with the goal of bringing the coats to Chicago by asking folks to sponsor a coat with a $100 donation for the manufacturing of the coat. Broken down, the money will help cover the labor, materials and overhead expenses involved in creating the coat.
To date, the Warmest Weather project has raised more than $43,000, which has funded the manufacturing of 430 EMPWR coats. The coats are noted for being water resistant and self-heating, in light of them being constructed with upcycled automotive insulation and durable work fabric from Carhartt. When they are not being worn, the coats can be carried as an over-the-shoulder bag.
Founded by Veronika Scott, a social entrepreneur, the Empowerment Plan started distributing the EMPWR coats in Detroit in 2011 with 10 formerly homeless women the organization initially employed, according to The Huffington Post. Since its creation, the Empowerment Plan now employs 20 formerly homeless individuals, who have created more than 9,000 coats.
The organization’s partnership with Chance the Rapper allows for its coats to come to Chicago with an ultimate goal of opening an Empowerment Plan factory in the city and offering homeless Chicago residents a chance to earn a living wage.
For his part, Chance the Rapper is using the power of social media to actively promote the Warmest Winter initiative. Since last week, the rhymesayer has been busy encouraging his more than 1.2 million Twitter followers and 900,000 Instagram fans to donate to the cause with offering donors such things as
tickets to one of his concerts, a Chicago White Sox game and a Chicago Bulls game.
Within hours of Chance the Rapper’s first tweet about Warmest Winter, $7,500 — or 75 coats — had been raised, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The support comes at a troubling time in Chicago, which is experiencing a harsh winter. Mic.com references findings from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, which reveal that an estimated 125,838 Chicagoans were homeless during the 2014-2015 school year. The National Coalition for the Homeless found that out of the homeless population in America, about 700 people die of hypothermia every year.
Estimates by Warmest Winter state that for each 1,000 coats funded, it can save 14 lives. The initiative is set to run until Jan. 13.
For more information and to donate to Warmest Winter, click here. To see one of Chance the Rapper’s tweets about Warmest Winter, scroll below:
An image of the Warriors’ Stephen Curry from an ad that is the result of a partnership between the N.B.A. and the organization Everytown for Gun Safety. (photo via nytimes.com)
The National Basketball Association, alarmed by the death toll from shootings across the country, is stepping into the polarizing debate over guns, regulation and the Second Amendment with an advertising campaign in partnership with one of the nation’s most aggressive advocates of stricter limits on firearm sales.
The first ads, timed to reach millions of basketball fans during a series of marquee games on Christmas Day, focus on shooting victims and contain no policy recommendations. The words “gun control” are never mentioned.
Besides N.B.A. players, the ads feature survivors of shootings and relatives of those killed by guns. (photo via nytimes.com)
The N.B.A.’s involvement suggests that a bloody year of gun deaths — in highly publicized mass shootings and countless smaller-scale incidents — may be spurring even some generally risk-averse, mainstream institutions to action.
Players who appear in the first 30-second ad, which will run five times on Friday, speak in personal terms about the effects of gun violence on their lives. Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors describes hearing of a 3-year-old’s shooting: “My daughter Riley’s that age,” he says. Chris Paul of the Los Angeles Clippers recalls the advice he heeded as a child: “My parents used to say, ‘A bullet doesn’t have a name on it.’”
The N.B.A. said it held little internal debate about working with Mr. Bloomberg’s group. “We know far too many people who have been caught up in gun violence in this country,” said Kathleen Behrens, the league’s president of social responsibility and player programs. “And we can do something about it.”
But the decision may prove tricky for the league: While many of its teams are based in cities dominated by Democrats, a number of other teams — and millions of N.B.A. fans — hail from places where Mr. Bloomberg and his approach to guns are viewed with deep suspicion. Ms. Behrens said the league had not shown the ads to team owners, but added, “We’re not worried about any political implications.”
The Bloomberg-N.B.A. partnership was brokered by an unlikely figure: Spike Lee, a member of Everytown’s creative council, whose latest film, “Chi-Raq,” set on Chicago’s South Side, confronts gun violence with an unflinching eye.
Over breakfast at the Loews Regency Hotel in Manhattan in November, not long before the movie was released earlier this month, Mr. Lee proposed the idea for the ads to John Skipper, the president of ESPN, who then took it to Adam Silver, the N.B.A.’s commissioner. Mr. Lee insisted on the participation of Everytown, with which he collaborated on a protest march down Broadway after the film’s New York premiere.
In an interview, he sounded many of the themes that Mr. Bloomberg himself has emphasized in the past, saying it was time for “common sense anti-gun laws.”
“But because of the N.R.A., politicians and the gun manufacturers, we’re dying under that tyranny,” Mr. Lee said.
Mr. Bloomberg’s interventionist policies as mayor and his left-leaning tactics on guns have earned the vitriol of gun-rights advocates, who have mocked him with TV ads as an out-of-touch elitist.
The New Stereotype: The Reclaim (photo via Shadow And Act)
A new web series on Vimeo has been launched this month called “The New Stereotype: The Reclaim” which aims to change the perception of black men in the media.
Conceived by Harlem-based Marquelle Turner-Gilchrist, who is an assistant buyer for a luxury fashion company, he says that he came up with the idea for the series to “show the diversity and strength of black males.”
He then reached out to friends and others willing participants through social media to be a part of the project, and created it to be all inclusive, taking into account skin tones, fashion styles, careers and backgrounds from all over the world, such as Ghana, the Virgin Islands, North Carolina, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Georgia.
The result is basically a fashion show for young, successful, upwardly mobile brothers (or “dandies” as I call them) who are eager to show a different image from the sagging pants and gold teeth that the media offers too often..
But if the idea of the series is to break away from the usual stereotypes of black men, then why use the word “stereotypes” in the title of his series? Well Mr. Turner-Gilchrist has an answer for that: “In order to truly create a ‘stereotype’ there must be frequency and consistency… For now, the idea is to continue to spread the imagery and message and investigate ways to elevate the project.”
Real life? For Serena Williams, that’s the easy part now. That’s how it works when you zoom—beyond tennis, beyond $74 million in prize money, beyond one of the greatest late-career runs in sports history—into celebrity hyperspace. That’s how it is when each “Come on!” is taken as a war cry by everyone from “Lean in” women to age-defying codgers to body-shamed kids to #BlackLivesMatter protesters to, yes, the voices of racial conciliation. The outside world accommodates. Real life does you favors.
Indeed, in 2015 Williams hit this rare sweet spot, a pinch-me patch where the exotic became the norm. She danced with Donald Trump on New Year’s Eve. She spent a night telling bedtime stories to the children of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Growing up, Williams had devoured every Harry Potter book, marveled at the business empires of Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart. Now J.K. Rowling was tweeting against a critic of Williams’s body, now Oprah was hustling to watch her at the U.S. Open, now Stewart was calling Williams “the most powerful woman I know.” President Barack Obama, the most scrutinized man alive, told her how great it was to watch her.
Even Williams’s most dubious moves paid off. In July, just as her drive for tennis’s first Grand Slam in 27 years hit the bell lap, she appeared in Pixels, a comedic bomb in which she anticipated a Lincoln Bedroom sex sandwich with Stewart and Peter Dinklage. Yet she escaped critical savaging, and, oh, the movie grossed $243 million. Williams’s November decision to chase down a cellphone thief in San Francisco seemed equally foolhardy—until, that is, the guy gave her phone back. Meekly.
Photo: Yu Tsai for Sports Illustrated
No, this year only the game gave Williams trouble. Only the 78-by-36-foot confines of a tennis court, be it blue asphalt or red clay or green grass, produced the kind of pushback that no amount of money or fame can overcome. If the real world felt like one A-list club after another, eagerly waving Williams in, tennis was the world’s most annoying bouncer, forever checking her ID. Tennis made her desperate. Then it made her hurt.
The results, of course, hardly imply that: Williams, 34, won three major titles, went 53–3 and provided at least one new measure of her tyrannical three-year reign at No. 1. For six weeks this summer—and for the first time in the 40-year history of the WTA rankings—Williams amassed twice as many ranking points as the world No. 2; at one point that gap grew larger than the one between No. 2 and No. 1,000. Williams’s 21 career Grand Slam singles titles are just one short of Steffi Graf’s Open-era record. Such numbers are reason enough for Sports Illustrated to name Serena Williams its 2015 Sportsperson of the Year.
First Lady Michelle Obama and Jay Pharaoh (via COLLEGE HUMOR)
Just call her “Flow-tus,” because Michelle Obama has flow and bars. The first lady teamed up with Saturday Night Live’sJay Pharoah in a new rap song that encourages teens to attend college.
In the video, produced by College Humor, Pharoah and Obama rap about the benefits of attending college, minus the student loans, of course.
“South Side Chicago, we all know, we had to do overtime every night to make it tomorrow,” Obama raps. “And everyone could really make their dream true. Hey, kid listenin’ in Michigan, that could be you!”
Check it out below:
Nyerere Davidson never imagined that a gathering with friends from around the country would produce an iconic photo representing the future of historically black colleges and universities, but the 2008 Florida A&M University graduate couldn’t be happier about it.
“I just thought it would be a nice illustration to counteract the stereotypes about young black people,” says Davidson, a Milwaukee native and recent transplant to Washington D.C. who organized the shoot as a commemorative moment for his birthday celebration last month in the District.
“This is a range of different people from different parts of the country, different shades, different looks and different styles representing what black excellence looks like. And all of us are from HBCUs.”
Davidson is a marketing executive with the YMCA’s national headquarters, and promotes the organization’s Healthy Living/Healthy Communities initiative. A former volunteer with the YMCA’s community-based Black Achievers program in Milwaukee, he says that imagery is a powerful part of connecting with black youth and showing real possibilities in education and professional life.
“With everything going on at Mizzou, and in cities throughout the country, I think this shows young black people in a totally different way,” he said. “We’re all professionals – doctors, fashion designers, corporate executives – but we’re young and we embrace our responsibility to our communities and what our image means to the outside world.”
“Today we live in a world where there is so much attention devoted to the distorted portrayals of African Americans specifically black males,” says Jacob Waites, a 2010 Cheyney University graduate who was among the attendees featured in the photo. “A society where one image can have a huge impact on perception. This is why it’s imperative that images such as the one from Nye’s 30th birthday brunch is so essential. It’s time to dispel the exaggerated views of African Americans and give the world a real-world experience.”
Friends with alumni ties to FAMU, Claflin, Howard, Morgan State, Alcorn State, Tennessee State, Morehouse and Cheyney are represented in the image. Many say they are proud of their HBCU experience and aware of the role that scenes like this play in promoting similar experiences for future HBCU students.
“Being a part of this photo was iconic for me– when we came together, W.E.B. Dubois ‘Talented Tenth’ essay came to mind,” says Kimberly Guy, a 2002 Tennessee State alumna. “He asserted, ‘The Talented Tenth of African Americans must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people….Negro Colleges must train men [and women] for it.'”
“In an era of social media with its sometimes derogatory and stereotypical portrayals of African Americans, I feel this photo captures the essence of the Talented Tenth. As a proud HBCU alum, this pic represents collectively all professional black in society that are proudly commited to carrying on the legacy established by our forebears while exceeding society expectations for our race. We are leaders, we are pillars of the community, and we are ‘regular folk’. But most importantly we are young, gifted, and Black.” article via hbcudigest.com
“The Wiz Live!” on NBC, December 3 at 8pm EST/PST (photo courtesy NBC) NEW YORK — When “The Wiz Live!” airs on NBC this Thursday, it will come alive for the blind with a voiced description of the broadcast’s sights and action integrated into its soundtrack.
NBC parent Comcast says this will be the first live entertainment program in U.S. history to be accessible in this way to those who are blind. The vocal description is a narration track interspersed between existing pauses in dialogue that describes the show’s visual elements such as facial expressions, settings, costumes and stage direction.
This enhanced broadcast of “The Wiz Live!” will be a pilot program available on local NBC stations where SAP (Second Audio Program) feeds are available. The service will be provided by Descriptive Video Works, which has provided more than 1,000 hours of live description for certain news and sports events.
“The Wiz Live!” premieres Thursday at 8 p.m. EST, with stars including Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, David Alan Grier, Ne-Yo, Elijah Kelley, Uzo Aduba and Common, as well as Shanice Williams as the young heroine, Dorothy. article via accessatlanta.com
