“Dogs and Horses, Oh My!”
In Carson City, Nevada, on acres of desert land, minimum-security inmates gentle wild horses amidst the desert sand, redirecting energy into lasting bonds with horses that are later put up for adoption.
In Long Island’s Suffolk County Yaphank Correctional Facility, inmates train shelter dogs that would otherwise be considered too aggressive for adoption.
Across the country, projects like the Wild Horse Program and Handcuffs to Healing teach inmates how to handle animals that are considered temporarily unfit for human society. In the Wild Horse Program, the horses trained by inmates go on to live happily with families across the country—“she’s the strong one teaching me,” Donna Nappo-Slocum wrote on Facebook of Tula May, the filly Nappo-Slocum adopted from the Arizona branch of the Wild Horse Program. Handcuffs to Healing similarly gives non-violent offenders the chance to connect with animals while giving dogs a better chance at being adopted. As inmates in both the Wild Horse Program and Handcuffs to Healing train animals, they seem to come out for the better, with skills applicable to future jobs.
In a society where fitting in is less about natural talent and more about being born under circumstances conducive to success, acquiring the skills one needs to succeed is possible with win-win, rehabilitative programs like the Wild Horse Program and Handcuffs to Healing. Being a misfit, human or animal, becomes less about sticking out and more about learning how to make sense of the things that help or don’t help us fit in. It’s a wild world, and learning how to live in it is often worth more than the struggle implies.
–Camille Dourmashkin-Cagol
Harassment in Hollywood
On Friday afternoon, The Weinstein Company’s board announced that one of its CEOs, Harvey Weinstein, will take an indefinite leave of absence as reports of sexual harassment surface and pile up against him. Harvey Weinstein, who has produced films like Pulp Fiction before co-founding The Weinstein Company in 2005, is a leading, critically-acclaimed producer in Hollywood with Oscar-winning films such as The King’s Speech and The Artist. Despite his accomplishments, however, his history of sexually harassing female employees and co-workers spans as far back as the 1990’s.
The first known incident of sexual harassment was in the early 1990’s, when Weinstein harassed Ashley Judd in the Peninsula Beverly Hills Hotel, where she thought they would have a work-related breakfast meeting. After that, there’s an extensive history of complaints from women who work for him, to the point that, in some cases, “employees banded together in solidarity,” not letting each other go to meetings with Weinstein unaccompanied.
In many cases, his behavior followed a similar pattern: invite an employee to a hotel for a meeting which she believes to be work-related, appearing nearly or fully naked, and insisting on receiving or giving a massage while in his state of undress, or insisting that she be present in the bathroom while he bathes. In some of these cases, women like Emily Nestor, a temporary employee who had, at the time, only worked for one day, reported that he “would boost [their] career[s]” if they “accepted his sexual advances.” His power in Hollywood is also why many women did not speak up or report the incidents: coming forward about the harassment could harm their reputation and job opportunities in the film industry more than it could ever hurt Weinstein’s.
To cover his own behavior, not only did many of the women he harassed receive settlements to “buy peace,” but he also painted himself as a supporter of women’s rights and an advocate for ending violence against women, distributing The Hunting Ground (a documentary about sexual assault on college campuses), hosting a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton last year, and attending the Sundance Film Festival’s equivalent of the Women’s March.
Weinstein has not offered many comments about the situation, but has said that some of the accusations against him are “patently false,” and issued an apology:
I came of age in the 60’s and 70’s, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different. That was the culture then.
I have since learned it’s not an excuse, in the office — or out of it. To anyone.
I realized some time ago that I needed to be a better person and my interactions with the people I work with have changed.
I appreciate the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it. Though I’m trying to do better, I know I have a long way to go.
After reading the phrase “[t]hough I’m trying to do better, I know I have a long way to go,” it’s hard not to wonder, just how hard is it to not sexually harass women?
One New York Times article on Weinstein’s departure from his company featured the headline, “Without Harvey Weinstein, Is There a Weinstein Company?” and though I can’t answer that question, one thing is clear: despite three members from the board of directors stepping down after reports of harassment began to surface, the main concern is Weinstein’s presence, or lack thereof, in the company. If there is no Weinstein Company without Weinstein, it is not because of his treatment of women, but rather because of his power to produce Oscar-nominated films.
Truthfully, I doubt the reports of sexual harassment will have any impact on his reputation or job prospects in the future, once the scandal has died down. Hollywood continues to be a safe haven for men who abuse, rape, assault, and sexually harass women, and I’m sure Weinstein will continue to have a strong presence in the film industry, in the same way Casey Affleck and Johnny Depp have thriving acting careers despite their treatment of women, and in the same way that Woody Allen continues to be hailed and protected as one of Hollywood’s most iconic figures.
[Update: As of Sunday, Weinstein has been fired from the Weinstein Company as a result of the scandal caused by the New York Times’ article detailing their investigation on the matter, and both of his advising lawyers have quit. The future of Weinstein’s company is uncertain as their board of directors is now down by four members, though it’s hard to say whether Weinstein’s job prospects will suffer from this in the long run.]
-L
Dove Has to Clean Up its Act
In early October 2017, Dove released an advertisement depicting a black woman taking off her shirt to reveal a white woman underneath, their product in the corner of each section of the grid.
Unsurprisingly, this ad was met with harsh criticisms and general consumer outrage. The photo was deleted and the campaign was pulled almost immediately with the following comment posted by the company on Twitter:
The thing is, the company seems to be unable to explain what exactly their mark was. If the outright racist message of this advertisement was not the company’s intent, then what was? Because this isn’t Dove’s first time releasing racist content. In 2014, they released an ad showing a before and after scenario for their “VisibleCare” products. Though the ad is supposedly asking you to evaluate the posters in the background of this image as the before and after, people could not help realizing that the models in the foreground went from darker to lighter skin tones, suggesting that Dove has called on this racist soap trope.
Both ads recall a history of racist advertising campaigns that depict dark skin as unclean, such as these:
Dove has recalled the 2017 ad and accepted criticisms for the 2014 campaign, but the question that remains is how many more times will this racist ideology be represented and proliferated by a company that claims to support “Real Beauty?”
-Margaret Iuni
The Junction Journal 