All Posts Tagged With: "Lena Dunham"
Crackdown on social media ‘thinspiration’ fails
But eating disorder foundation fights back
a.drian/Flickr
The Internet has been great for spawning subcultures—Star Trek geeks, fantasy football fans and progressive rock nerds have their own corners of the net to meet up in. Unfortunately, not all communities online are positive, and some are even harmful. For those who have been affected by an eating disorder, this article may contain triggers.
A quick search on Pinterest, Instagram, or Tumblr for the terms ‘thinspiration’, ‘ana’ (short for anorexia) and ‘mia’ (short for bulimia) brings up tens of thousands of disturbing posts. Photos focusing on concave stomachs and protruding hip bones, with overlying text reading mantras such as, “I won’t be beautiful until my thighs don’t touch,” “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” and tips suggesting to “Throw out food from the fridge so you can tell people you ate earlier”.
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HBO’s Girls, the plagiarism debate & free speech at U of T
What students are talking about today (January 14th)
Girl's Dunham (HBO/Instagram)
1. Lena Dunham’s HBO series Girls won the Golden Globe for best TV comedy series last night right before the highly-anticipated premiere of the second season. I’d argue the opener was a bit of a letdown. Lead character Hannah (played by Dunham) has smartened up a bit by rejecting her mean sort-of-boyfriend in favour of new guy who presumably treats her better. If she gets too mature, that’s a problem as her Gen-Y cluelessness provided so much of the comic relief and provoked so many of the broader societal questions. Some of the other characters, including straight-laced Marnie, seem to also be changing in ways that make them less believeable. Interestingly, Dunham seems to have acknowledged those who accused Girls of being too white; her new fling is a black man.
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Buckwild TV, Dalhousie hazing & Gen Y’s narcissism
What students are talking about today (January 7th)
The cast of Buckwild (MTV.ca)
1. The new TV season is promising for university students, according to Alexander Quon of The Sheaf student newspaper. His list of shows to watch includes Buckwild, which he calls “essentially the country version” of Jersey Shore. “Redneck culture is blowing up right now,” he writes. It certainly is, thanks mostly to Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, which returned to TLC on Sunday. Returning this Saturday on HBO Canada is Lena Dunham’s smash hit Girls, a fictional-take on 20-somethings in New York centred around Hannah, an aspiring writer and generally clueless human being. Pick up this week’s issue of Maclean’s for a behind-the-scenes on set in Brooklyn. Oh, and hockey will soon be back too.
2. What a difference a weekend makes. The talk around Idle No More shifted from Friday’s big win to Monday’s big question. On Friday, Stephen Harper agreed to meet hunger striking chief Theresa Spence and other Aboriginal Canadian leaders a week later, which will mark a month after the high-profile protest began. But this morning an external audit into Attawapiskat’s finances by Deloitte surfaced and it doesn’t look good. There hasn’t been due diligence for most of the millions given to Spence’s band by the federal government. It’s a reminder of just how complicated these relationships can be. With questions over the chief’s spending on the front page again, Paul Wells points out that NDP leader Tom Mulcair neither met Spence nor called on Stephen Harper to meet her in his open letter. That’s starting to look like a smart move. Spence, meanwhile, did gain one new ally. Paul Martin, former Liberal prime minister, met her and called an inspiration to all.
Continue reading Buckwild TV, Dalhousie hazing & Gen Y’s narcissism
What students are talking about today (October 26th edition)
Red Bull, Frankenstorm, Pippa, STEM & Toronto Fashion
Alex of Gothenburg/Flickr
1. A Korean student at Cape Breton University is expected to be deported today after an outburst involving threats to a residence adviser. The decision is despite arguments from his lawyer that the incident was the result of drinking too many caffeinated Red Bull energy drinks, reports CBC News. Red Bull may yet give this guy wings—in the form of an airplane back to Asia.
2. For the first time, the fossils of feathered dinosaurs have been found in the Americas—dug up in the Alberta badlands by a Canadian team, reports Maclean’s science scribe Kate Lunau. The bones are from the same ostrich-like dinosaurs that famously appeared in Jurassic Park.
3. Frankenstorm, a.k.a. Hurricane Sandy, could merge with another weather system just in time to do serious damage to Eastern Canada and the U.S. on or before Halloween. Scared yet?
Continue reading What students are talking about today (October 26th edition)
What students are talking about today (October 17th edition)
Free textbooks in B.C. and a couple of dumb online posts
wohnai/Flickr
1. British Columbia says it will become the first province in Canada to offer students free online textbooks. They will be available as early as 2013-14 and will cover the 40 most popular post-secondary courses. Printed options would come at a “fraction of traditional textbook costs.”
2. An Ontario man who wrote “Thank God this b—- is dead” on a memorial page for Amanda Todd was fired from his job at a London, Ont. menswear store. Justin Hutchings told The Toronto Star that he wanted to “stir up the pot” and called it “more or less a social experiment.” A Calgary woman called his boss after seeing the post about the teen who killed herself last week.
3. Speaking of dumb internet postings, Lena Dunham, the writer and star of HBO’s Girls, is making headlines for her offensive Tweet to a couple of friends. It says: “You guys go as killer Canadian couple Paul Bernardo & Karla Homolka. I’ll be her sister they murdered. Scariest! Luv U.”
Continue reading What students are talking about today (October 17th edition)
What students are talking about today (Oct. 4 edition)
Big Bird, full buses in B.C., hackers & Lena Dunham
B.C. Transit bus (scazon/Flickr)
1. In a poll, two-thirds of CNN viewers concurred that Romney came out on top. Romney didn’t win with the under-12 demographic, however, as he said he’d cut funding to PBS, home of Big Bird, because public television is not worth borrowing money from China to fund. Luckily for him, children can’t vote.
2. Transit users in Victoria, B.C. are being passed up by full buses more than twice often as predicted by B.C. Transit before they implemented “real-time tracking.” The agency suggests post-secondary schools should stagger class start times to reduce the problem. I have a feeling this isn’t just a frustration for B.C. students. Am I right?
3. Hackers called Team GhostShell have claimed responsibility for breaking into more than 120,000 computer accounts at dozens of universities to protest what they see as high-cost and low-quality higher education. Sites at the University of British Columbia and McMaster University were on the list of what’s called “ProjectWestWind.” Identity Finder, a data-protection company, found that more than 35,000 e-mail addresses and thousands of usernames were compromised. Most of the sites were the type made by professors themselves, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (Oct. 4 edition)
