Lady Gaga, Eminem and Jay-Z have proven to be International stars. Illustrated by their nominations at UK's The Brit Awards. While one of the world's biggest sensations in 2009, Susan Boyle has been totally shut out.
The award show which will be held at London's Earls Court on February 16 will feature performances by Lily Allen, Jay-Z and Cheryl Cole according to Music-News Underground.
It seems astonishing that Susan Boyle who has sold more than 1.6 million copies of her debut album "I Dreamed A Dream" in the UK alone wouldn't at least be asked to perform. But Ged Doherty, chairman of the BRITs Committee and Sony Music U.K. chairman and CEO, says. "Susan won't be performing on the show, not this year" according to Billboard,
Lady Gaga received a total of three nominations while Taylor Swift, Black Eyed Peas, Rihanna, Eminem, Jay-Z and Shakira are all up for one apiece.
BRIT Awards 2010 Nominees:British Male Solo Artist
Calvin Harris
Dizzee Rascal
Mika
Paolo Nutini
Robbie Williams
British Female Solo Artist
Bat for Lashes
Florence & the Machine
Leona Lewis
Lily Allen
Pixie Lott
British Breakthrough Act
(Winner chosen by Radio 1 listeners)
Florence & the Machine
Friendly Fires
JLS
La Roux
Pixie Lott
British Group
Doves
Friendly Fires
JLS
Kasabian
Muse
British Album
Dizzee Rascal "Tongue n'Cheek" (Dirtee Stank)
Florence & the Machine "Lungs" (Island/Universal Music)
Kasabian "West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum" (Columbia/Sony Music)
Lily Allen "It's Not Me, It's You" (Regal Recordings/EMI Music)
Paolo Nutini "Sunny Side Up" (Atlantic/Warner Music)
British Single
(Winner selected by U.K. commercial radio listeners)
Alesha Dixon "Breathe Slow" (Asylum/Warner Music)
Alexandra Burke Ft Flo Rida "Bad Boys" (Syco Music/Sony Music)
Cheryl Cole "Fight For This Love" (Fascination/Universal Music)
Joe McElderry "The Climb" (Syco Music/Sony Music)
JLS "Beat Again" (Epic/Sony Music)
La Roux "In For The Kill" (Polydor/Universal Music)
Lily Allen "The Fear" (Regal Recordings/EMI Music)
Pixie Lott "Mama Do" (Mercury/Universal Music)
Taio Cruz "Break Your Heart" (4th & Broadway/Universal Music)
Tinchy Stryder Ft N-Dubz "Number 1" (4th & Broadway/Universal Music)
International Male Solo Artist
Bruce Springsteen
Eminem
Jay-Z
Michael Bublé
Seasick Steve
International Female Solo Artist
Lady Gaga
Ladyhawke
Norah Jones
Rihanna
Shakira
International Breakthrough Act
(Winner chosen by MTV viewers)
Animal Collective
Daniel Merriweather
Empire of the Sun
Lady Gaga
Taylor Swift
International Album
Animal Collective "Merriweather Post Pavilion" (Domino Recordings)
Black Eyed Peas "The E.N.D." (Interscope/Universal Music)
Empire of the Sun "Walking on a Dream" (Virgin/EMI Music)
Jay-Z "The Blueprint 3" (Roc Nation/Warner Music)
Lady Gaga "The Fame" (Interscope/Universal Music)
BRITs Album of 30 Years
(Winner chosen by Radio 2 & 6 Music listeners)
Coldplay "A Rush of Blood to the Head" (Parlophone/EMI Music)
Dido "No Angel" (Arista/Sony Music)
Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" (Mercury/Universal Music)
Duffy "Rockferry" (A&M Polydor/Universal Music)
Keane "Hopes & Fears" (Island/Universal Music)
Oasis "(What's the Story) Morning Glory?" (Big Brother)
Phil Collins "No Jacket Required" (Virgin/EMI Music)
Sade "Diamond Life" (Epic/Sony Music)
The Verve "Urban Hymns" (Parlophone/EMI Music)
Travis "The Man Who" (Independiente)
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Video After The JumpCocaine City's French Montana continues his assault on the streets by dropping another banger "Go Hard". Directed by LyMe LyTe, this joint is off his soon to drop mixtape 'Mac N Cheese 2'
Since signing with Akon, French has shown no signs of slowing down. Expect more heat in 2010 from The Bronx rapper.
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Video After The JumpNEW YORK – Haitian-born musician Wyclef Jean defended his charity on Monday in the wake of questions about its practices while calling on the international community to enable the evacuation of his homeland's earthquake-ravaged capital.
"Port-au-Prince is a morgue," Jean said at a Manhattan press conference, recounting how he collected the corpses of small children and adults from the festering streets on his recent trip. Tears streamed down his face as he looked into the camera, speaking to his countrymen.
Residents should be evacuated to tent cities outside Port-au-Prince to allow for aid to reach them and so cleanup can begin in earnest, Jean said, asking for help from around the world in building encampments.
"We need to migrate at least 2 million people," Jean said, promising to draw on his status as one of Haiti's favorite sons to aid in such an effort. "I give you my word, if I tell them to go, they will go. But they need somewhere to go to," Jean said.
The musician made the plea for an evacuation at the behest of Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and President Rene Preval, said Hugh Locke, the president of The Wyclef Jean Foundation Inc.
The organization, also known as the Yele Haiti Foundation, has drawn fire in recent days as groups that vet charities raised doubts about its accounting practices and ability to function in a nation devastated by last week's earthquake.
Jean gave an impassioned defense of the organization, which has received more than $2 million in donations in just a few days.
"My dad always told me, if you're a man with a clear conscience, speak with a clear conscience and the world will know," he said. "Have we made mistakes before? Yes. Did I ever use Yele money for personal benefit? Absolutely not."
An Associated Press review of tax returns and independent audits provided by Jean's foundation showed that it was closely intertwined with Jean's businesses.
Among the mistakes by the young organization, Locke said, was the decision to buy $250,000 of airtime from Telemax S.A., a for-profit TV station in Haiti that is majority-owned by Jean and another foundation board member.
Locke said that Yele believed it was getting a good price for airtime in a nation where many are illiterate and rely on the TV for information. The decision would be handled differently now, he said.
The foundation plans to send donated supplies to Haiti on a plane provided by FedEx on Saturday. It is still deciding how donated funds will be spent, considering such options as mobile schools for refugee camps and security forces to escort supplies, Locke said.
Source: Yahoo
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Call the goodfellas the Mob Squad. Jay-Z, Young Jeezy and Trey Songz are getting ready to start the next leg of the BP3 tour and have adopted a nickname.
"The way Jay explained it to me, he wanted to give people the best show possible," Songz told Mixtape Daily Thursday. "They could have easily done it by themselves and it'd be great. But [Jay] wanted to give the best show. All of us bring a separate aspect to the table, making it a great show all the way. I'm there for the ladies, of course. Then I bring an R&B soul vibe and my hip-hop. Jeezy got the streets. And Hov is Hov.
"You gotta be there because it's action-packed from the jump," the singer added.
As big a venture as the trio will have onstage, they just might be doing it big offstage as well. Songz said they may do at least one record together.
"It's definitely all in the talks," Trigger Trey admitted. "It's the Mob Squad. Me, Jay, Jeezy, we plan on working together while we on this tour because the energy we have together when we get around each other is amazing. And like I said, all aspects like that on a record is amazing. Maybe while we out on the road we get it done."
Songz will definitely be working on his new mixtape and putting it out soon.
"I been in the studio. The first thing I did when I got back in the studio was the Rihanna 'Hard' [remix]. I explain how I go hard. As far as music is concerned, the grind is concerned, as far as women are concerned, I go hard. Then I went in and got four or five great records. That's actually four or five original records. I definitely want to release a mixtape to show people that [the skills] ain't went nowhere."
MTV
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Video After The JumpRosa Acosta really is doing the darn thing and I don't think anyone can argue that point.
The crazy thing is, you never get tired of seeing her. Whether it be in magazine photo spreads or music videos. The thing that separates her from other video vixens though, is the stretching which we get a brief glimpse of in this interview.
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Video After The JumpMike Greenberg of ESPN's very popular show 'Mike and Mike In The Morning' show made a colossal slip up this morning.
The veteran talk show host for both radio and television appears to say Martin Luther "Coon" instead of "King" as ESPN is coming back from a break.
There really is no excuse for this. I'm sure he will try to explain it away as just a slip of the tongue. But on a day of celebration for all the good things Dr. Martin Luther King stood for, Mike Greenberg has offended millions of people.
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Maybe doctors should leave their beepers at the door before performing surgery.
A Minnesota urologist was indefinitely suspended from doing surgery for removing the wrong kidney in a cancer patient - then a few months later did a biopsy on another patient’s pancreas when it should have been done on the kidneys.
Dr. Erol T. Uke, of Edina, was also reprimanded Friday by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The ruling states Uke could regain his surgical privileges if the board later determines he is competent enough.
Uke removed the wrong kidney from a cancer patient in March 2008. Uke told investigators that he was distracted by his beeper at the time and did not read the radiologist’s notes on the case.
Left with only one cancerous kidney, the patient was reported to have undergone another operation to remove the tumor while trying to save the kidney.
Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, where the wrong kidney was removed, has since made changes in its operating procedures in order to avoid similar mistakes.
Source: NY Daily News
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The rap mogul, best known for his lavish lifestyle and string of girlfriends, told the crowd at the BET Honor Awards that he admired garbage disposal men as a child.
He claimed to like watching their 'synchronized art and work ethic'.
The BET Honor Awards honours five black Americans for achievement in areas ranging from entrepreneurship to public service and education.
P. Diddy – real name Sean Combs – picked up the award for entrepreneurship while singer-and-actress Queen Latifah won the prize for media.
Also at the ceremony – which will be broadcast in the US on February 1 – Jennifer Hudson was given a standing ovation by Whitney Houston after performing one of the diva’s best known hits 'I Will Always Love You’.
Whitney was then given the BET Honour for Entertainment by 'So Sick’ hitmaker Ne-Yo.
Debra L Lee, BET Networks chairman, highlighted the plight of earthquake-struck Haiti during the event.
She said: 'Before this disaster, BET Networks, in celebration of its 30th anniversary, was set to donate thirty thousand dollars every month for a year to an organization that has dedicated itself to working towards a brighter future for the African American community.
'In light of the devastation in Haiti, BET plans to donate the first grant to immediate emergency relief in Haiti."
Accomplished educator Dr. Ruth Simmons and neurosurgeon Dr. Keith Black were also honoured - for education and public service respectively - at the ceremony, which took place at the Warner Theater in Washington.
Source: Music-News Underground
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The 'Hero' singer - whose mother is Irish-American and her father was an African-American of Venezuelan descent - claims she never fit in at school because of her heritage, leaving her very insecure about the way she looks.
She said: "I am very insecure about my looks, and I always have been because of being mixed race. It's not so weird now, and everyone's accepting it in a big way, but as a child I felt very, um, out of place and didn't feel pretty.
"When you grow up with that type of insecurity you don't always feel pretty."
Mariah began to realise she was different from other children when she took her white best friend on one of her weekly visits to see her father.
She told Observer Woman Magazine: "She got out of the car and went up the stairs to his house and he was over 6ft tall and very handsome, but to her he must have really been scary because I don't know that she'd ever seen a black man before. And she looked at him, her mouth went open and she started screaming and crying.
"I think he was trying to make me feel better and calm her down, but it didn't work. You never know what people say in their houses about different races. So my mother took her home and I went up the stairs with my father."
Source: Music-News Underground
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R&B and Pop Princess Janet Jackson covers the January/February issue of Gotham Magazine.
In it she talks about her new book, New Year's resolutions and her brother Michael's death.
Check out an excerpt from the interview below.
On what she’s taken from Michael’s death:
“When you hear people say life goes on, it’s really the truth. You can’t stop living. It becomes a part of you. I feel a bit selfish because there are times I feel I shouldn’t be doing this, but I enjoy my work and I have to keep doing it. I have to keep my life going. There are days that are harder than others.”
On her New Year’s resolutions:
“I want to learn a language. I haven’t decided which, but it’s between French, Spanish and Italian. I also want to get closer to God.”
On her new album:
“It’s going to be a little different. The writing is about life experiences. There’s a part of me that’s craving escapism, which is a sense of wanting to keep on moving with my work but also of coming to terms with reality. So I think it will be upbeat and light.”
On her new book:
“I hope it’s inspiring for all ages. I’m talking about weight loss, confidence, self-esteem—especially in your youth. It’s not an autobiography, but there are little anecdotes that I give here and there from my childhood all the way to the present that I thought would be interesting and helpful to share.”
On what she loves about New York:
“Everything. I love the energy–the creative energy. I’ve been here for 12 years and I will be here for the rest of my life.”
Mo'Nique Acceptance Speech After The JumpThe 2010 Golden Globe Awards were held last night (Sunday January 7th) and as expected 'Avatar' won the award for best motion picture. The film is well on it's way to becoming the highest grossing box office film of all time. Once that happens, director James Cameron will hold the distinction of having the 2 top slots with 'Titanic' being the other highest grossing film.
Mo'Nique won for best supporting actress for her role in the movie 'Precious'. It was a career defining performance for the woman many people only viewed as a comedic actress.
Mo'Nique Acceptance Speech
Check out the rest of the winner's list below.
-Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role: Mo-Nique, Precious
-Best Actress in TV Series Comedy: Toni Collette, United States of Tara
-Best Supporting Actor in a TV Mini-Series: John Lithgow, Dexter
-Best Animated Feature Film: Up
-Best Actor in a TV Series Drama: Michael C. Hall, Dexter
-Best Actress in a TV Series Drama: Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife
-Best Original Song for Motion Picture: "The Weary King," Crazy Heart
-Best Original Score: Michael Giacchino, Up
-Best Mini-Series or TV Movie: Grey Gardens
-Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical: Meryl Streep, Julia & Julia
-Best Actor in a Mini-Series or TV Movie: Kevin Bacon, Taking Chance
-Best Actress in a Mini-Series or TV Movie: Drew Barrymore, Grey Gardens
-Best Screenplay Motion Picture: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air
-Best Actor in a TV Series Comedy: Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
-Best Foreign Language Film: The White Ribbon, Germany
-Best TV Series-Drama: Mad Men
-Best Supporting Actress TV-Series, Mini-Series or TV Movie: Chloë Sevigny, Big Love
-Best Supporting Actor-Motion Picture: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
-Cecil B. DeMille Award: Martin Scorsese
-Best Director-Motion Picture: James Cameron, Avatar
-Best TV Series-Comedy or Musical: Glee
-Best Motion Picture Comedy or Musical: The Hangover
-Best Actress in a Drama: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
-Best Actor in a Motion Picture Comedy or Musical: Robert Downey Jr., Sherlock Holmes
-Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
-Best Motion Picture-Drama: Avatar
Chicago Bears defensive end Gaines Adams died Sunday morning of cardiac arrest, the Greenwood, S.C., county coroner said. He was 26.
Greenwood County coroner James T. Coursey told ESPN that Adams, a Greenwood native, was taken to the emergency room at Self Regional Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 9 a.m
Adams, who had just completed his third season in the NFL, went into cardiac arrest at his family's home early Sunday morning, said Marcia Kelley-Clark, chief deputy coroner for Greenwood County.
The autopsy showed Adams had an enlarged heart, a condition Kelley-Clark said can often lead to a heart attack. But Adams' relatives didn't know about it.
"Nobody was aware of any kind of medical condition," Kelley-Clark said.
Toxicology tests are being run by the State Law Enforcement Division, though drug use was not suspected as a factor in Adams' death. However, those results probably will not be available for at least two months, Kelley-Clark said.
"I remember him at the 2007 Draft as a fine young man," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said of Adams on Sunday. "Our condolences to Gaines' family, his teammates on the Bears and Buccaneers, and their organizations on their loss."
In 47 games over three seasons with the Bears and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Adams had 67 tackles, including 13.5 sacks.
"We are stunned and saddened by the news of Gaines' passing," the Bears said in a statement. "Our prayers are with his family during this difficult time."
Adams was selected fourth overall in the 2007 NFL draft by Tampa Bay, but was unable to live up to expectations that he would revive the Buccaneers' once-feared pass rush. He fell short of the benchmark set by Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris, who said at the start of training camp that Adams would be considered a "bust" if he didn't reach double digits in sacks. He was traded to Chicago in October for a second-round pick in the 2010 draft.
Adams said during training camp that he welcomed the challenge posed by Morris, who also called out the third-year pro after Adams began the season with lackluster performances in the first three games.
"In football you need that. Players tend to get in their own element and do things that they want to do. They need to be called out sometimes. He's the coach. Whatever he says, goes," Adams said in early August.
On Sunday, Morris called Adams "a true team player and a positive influence to everyone he met. My prayers go out to his family."
The Bucs' ownership and front office and Adams' former Tampa teammates were saddened by his death.
"Gaines was a quiet, humble kid and is far too young to be gone," cornerback Ronde Barber said. "He had so much potential that had yet to be achieved and I am very sad that the full extent of his life won't be realized."
"I still don't want to believe that it is true," added defensive tackle Chris Hovan. "I am deeply saddened that we have lost someone who I considered a friend for life. When he came to Tampa, I took Gaines under my wing; I considered him my little brother and that's how I will always remember him. This is all so unreal and it hasn't really hit me yet."
"Today is a tragic day," said ESPN analyst Jon Gruden, who drafted Adams as the Buccaneers coach. "Gaines was an impressive kid with such a tremendous future in front of him. He was a great teammate and well-liked by our coaches and all those who had the opportunity to be around him in Tampa."
Adams played brief stints on defense after his trade to the Bears, making five tackles.
Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher told the Chicago Tribune that Adams' death was "crazy."
"I didn't know him that well because he came in during the middle of the season," Urlacher said. "But I did know him. I still saw him every day when I went into work. It's just weird.
"I had a teammate die when I was in college. You just don't know how to handle it. It's just sad, man. It's a bad deal."
Adams was well-known among Clemson fans for breaking up Wake Forest's field goal try and returning it for a touchdown in 2006 to defeat the Demon Deacons.
Tommy Bowden, who was Adams' head coach at Clemson, said he couldn't believe the young player was gone.
"I just couldn't believe it was Gaines," Bowden said. "I will always remember the smile he had on his face and I will always remember his patience."
Source: ESPN
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Spike Lee is back in New Orleans today, beginning work on a sequel to his Emmy-winning documentary series When the Levees Broke for HBO. While the sequel doesn't yet have a name, it's intention is to shine a light on the region five years after the devastation of Hurrican Katrina, and I'd imagine the right name will present itself as he films.
It's easy enough for those of us who don't live in or around New Orleans to have kind of moved on with our lives, but it's not nearly so simple for them. The city is still decimated and struggling in so many places. The response, as it was when the hurricane first hit, has been severely lacking in certain ways.
At the same time, the community spirit and the rebuilding that has been taking place is inspiring and touching. I'm hopeful that Lee will showcase both the positive sides of the human spirit that have gone into the region in the intervening five years, as well as the serious disappointments the citizens have faced.
HBO is anticipating the project to be complete -- and titled -- for a summer 2010 release,
Writer: Jason J Hughes
Source: CinemaBlend
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One day I found myself ringing on the doorbell in a suburban street in Essex to talk to a self-confessed pornography addict. Jim, a quiet man in his early forties, was embarrassed by what we discussed over the following couple of hours but also eager to tell a story that he feels is probably less unusual than one might think.
“I know I’m not the only guy who’s like this,” he kept saying. Nor is he: there is a great leviathan of obscenity on the internet that anyone can access at any time with a couple of clicks of a mouse.
Jim first became aware of pornography long before the internet era. “My dad was really into pornography. I was five when I found a copy of his Mayfair. I found it quite captivating, to be honest.”
When he was about seven, Jim discovered hardcore European pornography in his father’s wardrobe, and he can remember some of those first images he saw. “I found them quite disturbing. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it, of course, because the whole point is that it’s hidden. You know that you’re not supposed to know about it.”
From then on he would get up before his parents woke, before six in the morning, to look through his father’s briefcase and find the porn magazines. “Then my dad got a Super 8 projector, when I was about 11 or 12, and he would hire porn films. He would lock himself in the dining room to watch them. But the real change came when he got a video, and I persevered till I found the films. I was about 14 and I would find them and watch them when I was alone in the house. Constantly.”
At this age, Jim did not have any relationships to set against this obsession. He was going to a boys’ school and never met girls socially. “I was obsessed with pornography, I wanted to be pornography, I wanted to live pornography,” he said. “It wasn’t good for me, I can see that now. I knew that even then, I think, but it was an addiction from the start. It had such a powerful hold on me. It had a huge effect on my behaviour with women.
“I was unable to think of women except as potential pornography. I looked at them in a purely sexual way. I remember one day I was walking to school, I was about 15, and I got talking to a girl who must have been about 18. I immediately said I wanted to grope her breasts. I had no idea how to interact with women as people.”
Even though Jim began to have girlfriends from the age of 19, he never managed to shrug off the power of the fantasy world. “The power of pornography has continued throughout my adult life. Nothing has really measured up to the world of porn, for me. I’ve seen thousands of strangers having sex. So when I have sex, I am watching myself having sex.”
In his thirties, he started a relationship with Ali, a direct-talking, well-read woman. He told her about his interest in porn and they used to watch videos together. At first she could see the “high” but when she became uncomfortable, he agreed to try to abstain. Once the internet was part of their lives, he could no longer control himself and began to use pornography again. The relationship broke down after seven years. “Pornography has made him only able to see sex one way,” Ali said. “He has always seen sex as something that has to be performed, not felt.”
She would like to see a public debate about the effects of pornography. “Porn has been so normalised that anyone objecting to it now is just going to be laughed at. I think we need to hear again about how pornography threatens intimacy.”
For Jim, pornography “has destroyed my ability to have intimate relationships”. One might think that someone who has seen as much as he has would not be unsettled by anything, but he is shocked by the way that the growing acceptability of pornography is putting into the mainstream a dehumanising view of women.
He finds the internet — with its images of rape, incest and abuse — “quite disturbing”. He said: “The stuff I saw as a kid was what we called hardcore, but the idea in the text alongside was that it was based on mutual consent — mutual pleasure — but what I see now is more male domination.”
Jim believes that very young men are beginning to see as normal images that would once have been seen as far beyond the pale. “It’s like bravado, they want to look at worse and worse stuff. When I was a kid what you saw was limited by what you could physically buy on paper. Now it all flashes around so quickly and the taboos have just fallen.”
Jim feels that, even for young men who don’t seek it out, the exposure to these images simply changes their attitudes to sex. I th“ink that kind of violence associated with sex lodges in your mind and you never forget it, however much you want to. It’s always there.”
Not only is the tone of pornography so often reliant on real or imaginary abuse of women, it is consumed in increasing numbers by young people who have little real experience to set against it.
Ali worries that what happened with Jim could be repeated with her own son. “I was first aware that he was looking at pornography when he was 14. But how can boys not see it? Unless they make a concerted decision not to look at it, to delete it from their mobiles when it’s sent to them, or from their emails. You’d be making a singular, probably a unique decision.
“Once someone like Jim was unusual, now every boy has seen all of that. I know what it does to young minds, and now it is more and more prevalent. God knows how we can begin to challenge this. Once upon a time, kids could experiment, you know, privately, but now all the innocence is lost.”
For a long time I was sceptical about the claim that the internet had really changed people’s access and attitudes to pornography. Those who want it have surely always been able to find it, whether they were living in 5th-century Athens or the 1950s. But the evidence has convinced me that the internet has driven a real change for many people, especially younger people.
Once upon a time, someone who was truly fascinated by pornography might have found, with some difficulty, 10, or 20, or 100 images to satisfy themselves. Now anyone can click on a single website and find 20, 100, 1,000 choices of videos and images, with the most specialist and violent next to the most gentle and consensual.
Statistics tell a story that is hard to ignore. A survey carried out in 2006 found that one in four men aged 25-49 had viewed hardcore online pornography in the previous month and that nearly 40% of men had viewed pornographic websites in the previous year.
It is the prevalence of pornography consumption among children that is most striking. In a study in 2000, 25% of children aged 10-17 had seen unwanted online pornography in the form of pop-ups or spam. By 2005 the figure was 34% — and 42% of children aged 10-17 had seen pornography, whether wanted or unwanted. In another study in Canada, 90% of boys aged 13 and 14 and 70% of girls the same age had viewed pornography. Most of this porn use had been over the internet. More than one-third of the boys reported viewing pornographic DVDs or videos “too many times to count”.
While once someone could live their whole lives without ever seeing anyone but themselves and their own partners having sex, now the voyeur’s view of sex has been normalised, even for children.
For an increasing number of young people, pornography is no longer something that goes alongside sex but something that precedes sex. Before they have touched another person sexually or entered into any kind of sexual relationship, many children have seen hundreds of adult strangers having sex.
When I spoke to one teenager who is studying for his A-levels and quoted statistics to him that said that the majority of young teenagers have looked at pornography, he laughed.
“More like 100%,” he said. “It’s when you’re 13 and 14 that everyone starts looking and talking about it at school — before you’re having sex, you’re watching it.
“I think that those lads’ mags are only read by certain kinds of boys. My friends wouldn’t read them, to be honest, just like they wouldn’t buy The Sun. But pornography — it crosses every social class, every cultural background.
“Everyone watches porn. And I think that’s entirely down to the internet; not just your home computer, but everything that can connect — your phone, your BlackBerry, whatever you’ve got — everyone’s watching porn.
“Adults have got to know what teenagers are doing, and if you’re caught, you get told off. But I never had a serious discussion with a teacher or anyone about it.”
I heard from teenagers that they want more chance to discuss seriously what they are seeing, since they seem to find that this world of pornography is absolutely open to them and yet is rarely referred to openly.
Now that the classic feminist critique of pornography — that it necessarily involves or encourages abuse of women — has disappeared from view, there are few places that young people are likely to hear much criticism or even discussion about its effects.
Many women who would call themselves feminists have come to accept that they are growing up in a world where pornography is ubiquitous and will be part of almost everyone’s sexual experiences. I can see why some are arguing that the way forward really rests on creating more opportunities for women in pornography, yet I think it is worth looking at why some of us still feel such unease with the situation as it is now.
I do not believe that all pornography inevitably degrades women, and I do see that the classic feminist critique of pornography is too simplistic to embrace the great range of explicit sexual materials and people’s reactions to them. Yet let’s be honest. The overuse of pornography does threaten many erotic relationships, and this is a growing problem. What’s more, too much pornography does still rely on or promote the exploitation or abuse of women. Even if you can find porn for women and couples on the internet, nevertheless a vein of real contempt for women characterises so much pornography.
The massive colonisation of teenagers’ erotic life by commercial pornographic materials is something that it is hard to feel sanguine about. By expanding so much in a world that is still so unequal, pornography has often reinforced and reflected the inequalities around us.
This means that men are still encouraged, through most pornographic materials, to see women as objects, and women are still encouraged much of the time to concentrate on their sexual allure rather than their imagination or pleasure. No wonder we have seen the rise of the idea that erotic experience will necessarily involve, for women, a performance in which they will be judged visually.
When I interviewed young women about their attitudes to sexuality, I was struck by one apparently trivial fact: that all of them agreed that they would never want to have sex if they hadn’t depilated their pubic hair.
“I would never want a man to see me if I hadn’t been waxed recently,” said one young woman from Cambridge University, and her friends nodded in agreement. “I don’t need to have all the hair removed, but it has to be neat,” said another.
“That is definitely tied into porn,” said another. “We know what men will have seen and what they will expect.”
Where the rise of expectations from pornography result just in depilation, that is one thing, but the rise of interest in surgery to change the appearance of the labia is another, far more worrying development. The number of operations carried out in the UK to cut women’s labia to a preconceived norm is currently rising steeply.
This development has been covered extensively in magazines and television programmes, often in a way calculated to increase anxiety among female viewers. In an episode of Embarrassing Teenage Bodies, screened on Channel 4 in 2008, a young woman consulted a doctor about the fact that her labia minora extended slightly beyond her labia majora and that this caused her embarrassment. Instead of reassuring her that this was entirely normal, the doctor recommended, and carried out, surgery on her labia.
The comments left on the programme’s website showed how this decision to carry out plastic surgery to fit a young woman’s body to a so-called norm made other young women feel intensely anxious.
“I’m 15 and I thought I was fine, but since I’ve watched the programme I’ve become worried, as mine seem larger than the girl who had hers made surgically smaller! It doesn’t make any difference to my life, but I worry now that when I’m older and start having sex I might have problems!” one girl said.
This idea that there is one correct way for female genitals to look is undoubtedly tied into the rise of pornography. One website for a doctor who specialises in this form of plastic surgery makes this explicit: “Laser reduction labioplasty can sculpture the elongated or unequal labial minora (small inner lips) according to one’s specification ... Many women bring us Playboy and say that they want to look like this. With laser reduction labioplasty, we work with women to try to accomplish their desires.”
If the rise of pornography was really tied up with women’s liberation and empowerment, it would not be increasing women’s anxiety about fitting into a narrow physical ideal.
The tide of pornography is so huge, and so easily accessible, that it often seems impossible to think about turning it back. Yet I don’t think we have to slip into despair. There is this idea that “innocence”, once lost, is lost for ever, that, as Jim put it, once pornography is viewed, “You never forget it, however much you want to.”
It is true that we cannot turn back the clock and wipe pornography out of our individual experience or the memories of our society. Yet there are still ways to move forward and to create places where the influence of pornography will be resisted. This will entail giving more support to people who are struggling with its dehumanising effects on their own relationships.
The starting point is public debate. A woman I’ll call Lara, who has been trying for several years to persuade her husband to give up pornography, wrote to me: “From some discussions I’ve had online I can see that many wives are struggling with their husband’s porn use. If the mainstream media began talking about porn addiction in the same way as they talk freely about drug abuse, gambling or alcoholism, then maybe my husband would see that he’s not the only man in the world who has this problem and would see that he should deal with it.”
Women scarred by the myth that selling sex is a positive career choice
Ellie is an articulate, well-educated woman who went to private school and a good university and was brought up to believe she could do anything in any profession — law, medicine, politics.
She decided she wanted to be an actress, but when jobs were hard to find and she found herself financially desperate, she took a sideways step in her twenties by going for an audition at a lap-dancing club in London.
“You just had to stand there and hold the pole and take your clothes off,” Ellie remembered. “I don’t think I’d thought it through. I was surprised when I saw what the other girls were wearing. I was just in a skirt and T-shirt and when they asked me to take my clothes off I was like, uh-oh, I’m wearing really bad pants. But they said, shave your pubes, get a fake tan, sort out your nails, dye your hair, pluck your eyebrows, come back next week. So I said okay, and I went and made myself orange. I did it for about six months, every night.”
For her it didn’t feel like a big step at first to go into the sex industry, because of the way that lap-dancing clubs have become an unremarkable part of British urban life in an incredibly short space of time. From only a few in the 1990s, there were an estimated 300 by 2008.
Ellie told me she had picked up the message that lap dancing was pretty straightforward and even empowering for the women who do it. “People say that, don’t they? There’s this myth that women are expressing their sexuality freely in this way, and that as they can make lots of money out of it, it gives them power over the men who are paying.”
She was shocked by quite how demeaning and dehumanising the work actually was. “There’s something about the club — the lights, the make-up, the clothes you wear, those huge platform heels, the way that so many women have fake boobs. You look like cartoons. You give yourself a fake girlie name, like a doll. You’re encouraged to look like dolls. No wonder the men don’t see you as people.”
Stripping in various styles is not the only element of the sex industry that has become far more acceptable. Prostitution has also moved from the margins to the mainstream of our culture in a development that one can track in the popularity of bestselling memoirs of prostitutes such as Belle de Jour. They have a matter-of-fact tone, and tend to emphasise how very normal the occupation is and how close to any liberated woman’s sex life.
Rather than being seen as shameful, prostitution can now be seen as an aspirational occupation for a woman. “My body is a big deal,” ran the advertising caption for the television series based on Belle de Jour’s book over huge images of the actress Billie Piper in underwear.
It would be naive to assume that the promotion of such a view of prostitution in the mainstream media does not have an effect on the real-life behaviour of men and women. A woman I’ll call Angela, who has been working as a prostitute for four years, explained to me how she had come to this point.
Although in some ways Angela was quite formal, and uneasy about sharing the details of her life, from time to time her rage would burst out in a torrent of words. In the sitting room of her chilly, scrupulously clean flat in Middlesex, where there were no comfortable chairs, but where there was a metal pole running floor to ceiling with a pair of patent high heels next to it, she told me how she had become involved in prostitution.
She first began to think about charging for sex when her marriage broke down. As a woman in her thirties who had not dated for a long time, she was eager to look for new experiences. Her friends said to her that she should go out, have a good time, find a man and have sex, and she began to use internet chat rooms to meet men. When she met them, she found “they would expect me to just get on with it, in the name of sexual liberation and fun”.
These experiences in the new world of unemotional sex surprised Angela, as things had changed so much since before her marriage. “When I had had relationships with men in the past, I have to say that they were usually equal and pleasurable experiences. There wasn’t the surround sound, the cultural imperative that it was all about sex, only about sex. What men expect you to do has really changed — anal sex, threesomes, even when you’ve just met them.”
At first she did not question what she was experiencing. “I believed what everyone said, that all this promiscuous sex was so empowering.” But as she went on having sex with men without much emotional engagement, Angela thought it would not be a huge step to begin charging. Since none of the men she met wanted a relationship, she felt they could give her something in exchange. She needed the money.
“I was pretty desperate to find a way to survive, to be honest. It dawned on me that I could get paid for this. I thought that it would be fun — I remember seeing a documentary on television about kids of rich Hollywood stars and there was one girl who said sometimes she went down to the Sunset Strip and got paid for sex as a bit of fun. I thought, okay, there’s no harm in it.
“When I went into it, I thought it would be easy. That’s what you’re asked to believe, isn’t it? I thought, okay, if this is empowering, let’s suck it and see.”
Angela was shocked by what she discovered about both the physical and the psychological impact of the work. “I saw it’s not empowering; it’s very disempowering. It’s harmful. It narrows how you value yourself, how you define yourself. It’s very dangerous to define yourself through the eyes of these men who are buying your body. I see that now — I wish I could get other women to see it. I feel as though this hypersexualisation of society — everyone’s falling for it, and more and more young girls think that prostitution is about being Billie Piper, being Belle de Jour, and it just isn’t. It really isn’t like that.
“There are a lot of clients who are respectful but it’s all over the spectrum. Really young ones want to experiment: they’ve seen stuff on the internet — violence and rape. What was extreme five years ago is commonplace now. I get inquiries about being tied up, being gagged. They want to tie you up; they want threesomes. I get the feeling that some of the men get off on the fact that the woman doesn’t want it. Basically you’ve consented to being raped sometimes for money.”
The matter-of-fact way that some women enter prostitution is also connected to the way that many men are now much more open about buying sex. The internet has been particularly useful in allowing men to believe they need not feel ashamed about buying sex from prostitutes. There are places on the internet where reviewing sex for sale is taken as naturally as reviewing books on Amazon. Men can discuss without hesitation how to satisfy their various tastes for larger, or older, or younger, or smaller women.
Source: London Times Online
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Video After The JumpTrey Songz made a recent appearance on The Wendy Williams Show. The R&B star performed his hit single "Say Ahh" from the album 'Ready'
This is the third hit from the album after "LOL :o)" and "I Invented Sex".
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BET celebrated the achievements of Whitney Houston, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and Queen Latifah at the 3rd Annual BET Honors taped at Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., on Saturday (Jan. 16). Among the evening’s highlights…
• Jennifer Hudson sang the praises of her idol Whitney Houston with her rendition of “I Will Always Love You” as Houston looked on.
• Jazmine Sullivan performed soul-stirring interpretations of “Unforgettable” and “Rock Steady” for Queen Latifah.
• Stevie Wonder and Trey Songz raised eyebrows by dueting on Trey’s raunchy single “I Invented Sex,” and hit a more somber note with their tribute to the late Teddy Pendergrass on “Wake Up Everybody” with special guest India.Arie.
• Mary J. Blige showed appreciation to the man who helped launch her career, Diddy, by singing a medley of her hits including “Love No Limit,” “I Love You,” and “Be Happy.”
• Maxwell closed the show with “Fistful of Tears” and “Bad Habits” from his Grammy-nominated album BLACKsummers’night.
The 2010 Bet Honors Show Airs February 1st at 9pm Eastern
Article & Pics From : Rap-Up
Whitney, Keith Black, Queen Latifah, Diddy, and Ruth Simmons
Singer and songwriter The Dream has put the finishing touches on his new album titled 'Love King'
He let the world know via his Twitter page Saturday (January 16).
The man who has either written or co-written such hits as J Holiday's "Bed", Beyonce's "Single Ladies" and his own hit single "Rockin That Thang" from his 2009 solo album 'Love vs Money'. Should be taken seriously when he says this is his best work yet.
In addition to his own album, The Dream is putting the finishing work on his wife Christina Milian's new album 'Elope'
Both albums are due out this year.
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