Béatrice Martin is a Montreal singer and performer behind the indie-pop Coeur de Pirate. Martin is, arguably, one of the most successful artists to emerge from Quebec since Celine Dion's reign during the 90s. Martin's debut self-titled French language record peaked on the Billboard chart at number six. From there, she began incorporating English into her work, notably with her last record 'Roses', broadening her reach as an artist. Still, though, the impact she's had on both Anglo and Francophone music is undeniable.
Martin came out as queer in an open letter on Noisey last summer after the Orlando Pulse nightclub shootings. The essay served as a way for Martin to work through and come to terms with who she is. Doing so as a public figure has its challenges: Martin's essay was met with praise and vitriol. But she was able to give voice to a personal transformation and struggle on a public platform in her own words. And so for her new column 'I'm Afraid of Everyone,' Martin will explore her struggle with anxiety, mental health, and doing that all while being a performer, public figure, partner, and, eventually, a mother.
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For as long as I can remember, I have been afraid of everyone. I can't pinpoint the exact moment when I felt socially crippled. I guess it probably comes from childhood, as most issues do. I was a dynamic kid—I mean weren't we all? My mother reminded me recently that, as a little girl, I would put on shows in front of my whole family—though I don't remember this—and that I had a great time doing so.
At that time, I was so excited to start elementary school, to make new friends. But when I got there, that's when it all started to crumble. Somehow, I became the go-to girl to bully. I was targeted by virtually everyone—even the kids who weren't my regular bullies. Every morning I took the school bus to get to school and I was forced to sit next to the trashcan on the floor next to the driver on the way there. The bus driver didn't do shit about it. I guess he was too worried about his drive, that his responsibilities were greater than my mental or physical health or he just genuinely did not care. I'd vote for the latter. I wasn't allowed on the benches otherwise something would be done to me and I remember being so scared of that. That's when I started to think people were mean and I couldn't trust them. I also believed I was probably as good as trash. Even in second grade, I was bullied by my teacher who went on to tell my parents that she thought I was "mentally retarded" because all I did was draw Sailor Moon characters in class. So now adults were after me too? If no one was going to have my back, then I better stay away from people.
I tried to belong—I really did try. It was hard because I went to private school and if you were from a family with an average income, there was no way you'd ever be popular. That's how it worked. You went skiing on week-ends? Your dad was a surgeon? You were automatically given a social pass. My parents had put all of their savings into my education, so we didn't get to go to places like Cancun on holidays. When I was done with elementary school, I begged my parents to send me away from anyone who bullied me at that school, specifically hoping to go to one in the east end of Montreal. It was still private, but in a different, less affluent neighbourhood. They agreed but I had to take two buses, and walk an hour every day to get there. Things weren't that much better over there. There were still cliques and they mostly revolved around sports because that was the school's focus—I wasn't the athletic type at all. I settled for the music program. I had a hard time belonging.
In 2007, Crystal Munoz was mothering a four-month-old and pregnant with her second daughter when DEA agents arrived at her Texas home. When she opened the door, Crystal had no idea that answering a few questions would lead to a 20-year prison sentence for marijuana. Her only crime, she says, was drawing a map of a ranch road in Texas's Big Bend National Park, a road that was later used to transport marijuana from Mexico into Texas.
Crystal has spent nearly a decade in prison, and her daughters have grown from newborns to toddlers to adolescents in her absence. She's missed every single birthday as well as first smiles, first steps, and first days of school. Both daughters are now nine; her oldest will turn ten in February. By then, Crystal will know whether the outgoing president—who has admitted to previously smoking marijuana and has publicly stated that it should be treated as a public health issue similar to cigarettes or alcohol—will reconsider her request for clemency. She knows this is probably her last chance to reunite with her children before they're young adults, as Trump's presidency looms ever closer.
The salacious allegations about President-elect Donald Trump made in a dossier authored by an ex-British intelligence officer have brought the old Soviet practice of 'kompromat'—the gathering of compromising material—to the forefront.
Gennady Gudkov, a former deputy in Russia's parliament, is known for his vocal criticism of President Putin and his party United Russia. He's also a former KGB and FSB colonel. VICE News spoke with Gudkov about kompromat's long history and its continued use in modern Russia.
What is 'kompromat' and how does it work?
Kompromat has existed as long as mankind. It's a practice of gathering information about somebody that they would never want disclosed. Kompromat is a means of leverage, to the extent that it can make a person commit a crime or do horrible things out of fear of being exposed. In those cases, it amounts to blackmail, which is a crime.
But besides blackmail, there are many other ways one can use kompromat—such as influencing a person's positions or politics with the help of embarrassing information.
Does the Kremlin gather kompromat, and what do they use it for?
Kompromat has been a favorite occupation of Russian elites throughout the last several centuries. They don't just gather kompromat, they regularly use it and actively leak it to the media. There is an ongoing war between political parties, with setups, fake news, lies and rumors. And Kompromat is the king in this war, especially when there is no democracy and transparency.
We live in the kingdom of lies, and the kingdom of kompromat.
Though it's below freezing, hundreds of drunk American college students—many without jackets—can be seen wandering the village of Whistler, a ski town in British Columbia, during the nights of Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. It's the kind of cold that makes your hands start to go numb after just a few minutes without gloves, yet it's totally normal to see young women linking arms and wearing miniskirts and high heels with bare legs walking like baby giraffes on the snowy cobblestone streets.
Photo by Peter Bailey
It might not be the typical way to celebrate the American national holiday dedicated to the leader of the Civil Rights movement, but for some sororities and fraternities in the Pacific Northwest, it's a long-running tradition. As an American who relocated to Toronto some time ago, I wanted to find out why so many of my brethren were coming up en masse to Whistler, a ski town known for playing host to celebrities and a disproportionate number of Australians.
How locals in Whistler party. Photo by Peter Bailey
"You've got some people in the 19 to 20 range who can't drink legally in their own home states, so they come to Whistler and they can drink… We have extra officers on to keep an eye on that," Steve LeClair of Whistler RCMP told VICE. "Typically, we get some people who are intoxicated in public… We do sometimes have to house them in our cells overnight."
In 2016, the RCMP was called 82 times during MLK weekend in Whistler, up from 71 times the previous year. One long-time resident of the town even raised concern publicly last year over the "uncomfortable" atmosphere of the American long weekend in Whistler.
Photo by the author
Whistler residents sometimes lovingly refer to the town, which has a population of just under 10,000, as a "bubble." That nickname may seem innocent enough, but Whistler has a very special, intense brand of party culture that is part of its ecosystem—one that could make your liver quiver in fear once you figure out what you're getting yourself into. When I arrived in the ski town just before MLK weekend, some locals took me under their wings to show me what average weeknights are like for them. Within my first few hours, I witnessed an Australian snorting lines of cocaine, a girl attempting to squeeze period blood out of her vagina onto the floor of a kitchen as a party trick, and drunk people giving each other stick-and-poke tattoos of stars.
Photo by the author
People who live in Whistler year-round are of a certain breed. The stamina of some is impressive: nonstop snowboarding, partying, fucking—and in order to sustain all of that, working. When they go out, it's more common to see jeans, hoodies, and toques than the attire that the American students don there on MLK weekend.
"Weekends don't really exist for us," one of my new local pals explained to me dreamily. She was right: Within my first 48 hours in Whistler partying with her group of friends (whom she referred to as her "family"), I had already lost sense of what day it was, and was spending my nights sleeping on a futon with two other people. But once Friday of MLK weekend rolled around, I was brought back to reality.
Photo by the author
That first jolt came in the form of seeing a frat dude wearing nothing but a T-shirt, short shorts, and cowboy boots outside in January on Friday night. When I asked him why he chose such attire in this weather, he told me, "I'm just being athletic." Soon, I realized his outfit was a uniform of sorts that a bunch of American guys in the town were wearing.
For a party town to exist, however, it needs a healthy supply of young people to work the nightlife scene. Beyond having to deal with the sometimes ridiculous behaviour of tourists, there's also the fact that Whistler is hella expensive. People who inhabit the ski town love it enough that they're willing to deal with rent prices that rival Canada's most populous cities, as well as precarious living situations—such as having a literal closet as a bedroom or paying to share a bed with a stranger. (While I was there, I even saw multiple Tinder profiles being used to find accommodations.)
Locals hiding out from the fuckery of MLK weekend at a house party. Photo by Peter Bailey
And for those Whistler residents working in nightlife, with the appearance of dudes in cowboy boots and shorts, one of the biggest weekends of the year in Whistler had just started.
"It's just hilarious dealing with them because some of the drink orders are so absurd… Everyone wants to do body shots, everyone wants to get on the bar," Scotty Mac, operations manager at MoeJoe's, a Whistler club, told VICE. "Every year, I have to teach hundreds of people how to do a Jagerbomb… You pass it to them, and they're like, 'What do we do?'"
A Tommy Africa's go-go dancer performs for the crowd of Americans in an aptly themed outfit. Photo by the author
I ended up at another club called Tommy Africa's in Whistler on Saturday night of MLK around 8 PM where go-go dancers wearing American-themed outfits were performing onstage. It was the last stop of an official club crawl where I spoke to a number of Americans who were already well in the bag about how they ended up in Canada for the weekend. As part of the crawl, attendees, including myself, were given nametags with coloured stickers that denoted the following: green= single, red= taken, yellow= hard to get, blue= horny. While wearing my nametag containing both blue and green stickers, I met some pleasant frat bros.
When I asked one if I could interview him about why they were in Whistler, he informed me of the following: "As a millennial, I don't provide my opinion for free." As this dude's friend Greg tried to interrupt him and offered to talk to me, frat bro number one kept inserting himself saying that he was "paying for someone's money for free" by talking to me.
Photo by the author
After a clear misunderstanding of how reporting, and perhaps even the world, works, Greg told me, "Asking us why we come here is like asking someone why they go to a certain place for lunch." It was some enlightening dialogue.
A bouncer at Maxx Fish, another Whistler club, named Web Johnson had a more unfortunate run-in than I did with some young, male Americans earlier in the week. (Though the majority of Americans celebrating MLK in Whistler come for just the weekend, Johnson said that some are there for additional days.)
Photo by Peter Bailey
"There was this group of girls in the club, and I could tell they were scared; they told me they were creeped out by this group of guys… I got the girls in a taxi, they left, and the guys surrounded me saying, 'What the fuck? You cock-blocked us!' Next thing I know, one of them punches me in the face," Johnson told me, pointing to a mark left on his cheek from the incident. He said that two of the men were wearing University of Washington gear. "[MLK weekend] is a lot of fun if you have the right mentality, but it's just hectic," Johnson said.
Photo by Peter Bailey
Later on Saturday night after my rude frat bro incident, I spoke to a group of sorority girls who actually treated me like I was a real human being. As I sat down at their table littered with vodka-crans at the club, I asked a woman named Rachel, who was in Whistler for her second MLK weekend, what her friend's blue drink was. She offered me a sip and, just as she promised, it tasted "like blue!" Finally, I had found someone to explain the American invasion Whistler experiences every year in their own words.
Americans wake up early to line up at Longhorn Saloon & Grill to watch football on MLK weekend. Photo by Peter Bailey
"I don't really know how it originated, but it started with University of Washington, there's kids from University of Oregon, OSU, some California schools… I think that word kind of spread, and now it's a big college weekend," Rachel, a 20-year-old Alpha Chi Omega, told me. "I feel like it's mostly the Greek system."
Another American woman I spoke to that night, Isabelle, 19, from Oregon, compared the party scene in Whistler to that of Mexico. "We've obviously picked here because the 19 drinking age, so it kind of feels like you're 21… I do ski, but I wanted to save my money for the drinks." At some point, I brought up the topic of Americans who want to move to Canada due to the Trump presidency, to which Isabelle responded: "I think it's all bullshit. If we're getting into politics: I'm for Trump."
The scene at Longhorn in Whistler during a Seahawks game. Photo by Peter Bailey
Myself being an American who relocated to Canada years ago partially because I disagreed with my home country's politics, I began to grow weary at some point after that conversation, but powered on. Here are some of my other highlights of the weekend: watching frat dudes choke each other out in a club seemingly for fun; having a dude follow me around a club over the course of an hour tapping me on the shoulder repetitively as a childish means of flirting; witnessing drunk girls crying in various club bathrooms. Truly, the most fitting description for MLK weekend in Whistler is this: a travelling frat party.
Photo by Peter Bailey
On the morning of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday in Whistler, frozen splatters of puke dotted snow piles around the village as some college students took their final walks of shame of the weekend in mini dresses and thigh-high boots. There were lost IDs, lost jackets, lost credit cards. But later that day, most Americans would take their several-hours-long bus rides back south of the border, allowing the bubble to return to its former self.
Locals at a house party on MLK weekend. Photo by Peter Bailey
Though the tradition of thousands of American college students coming to Whistler once a year can upset equilibrium and cause mayhem at odds with the type of partying residents are accustomed to, it's all ultimately part of the strange ecosystem that is Whistler. "Everyone takes the piss out of it, locals especially," Scotty Mac said. "But to be honest, I love it—they're a fun crowd to deal with."
While Pope Francis has been busy giving the Catholic Church a more caring and progressive face, a fictional pope has been birthed in the hallowed halls of the executive offices at HBO. But this is no ordinary pope! Unlike so many popes, this one is young—relatively.
The subject of internet jokes and memes for weeks now, HBO's The Young Pope has arrived on American shores to generally positive reviews. As it turns out, taking the pope and making him young serves as an excellent setup for entertainment. Perhaps more surprising, though, is that The Young Pope doesn't much resemble the Poochie-like impression many online jokesters have had going in. Instead, it's actually a good deal stranger, funnier, more self-aware, and more grossly self-satisfied than anyone might have predicted. It's also the logical conclusion of where TV has been headed for nearly a decade: It's the height of "prestige TV"—and a rebuke of it at the same time.
It was at the 2015 TCAs that FX President John Landgraf first raised alarm bells about "peak TV," by telling the gathered television press that with more than 400 scripted series produced that year alone, TV had found itself in a content bubble. That bubble hasn't popped yet, and shows little sign of slowing given the rise of new streaming platforms that are all pushing their own original content. Landgraf was drawing attention not just to the unsustainability of the current growth model in TV, but also to the way it has both allowed for new levels of quality and creativity, while simultaneously threatening to drown out some of the brightest voices amid the volume.
Ten years ago, we saw a major shift in the television landscape, which set the stage for the current peak TV predicament. In 2007, The Sopranos finally ended, but Mad Men began. The Sopranos, with its premium cable freedom, changed the face of television. But it was Mad Men, created by ex- Sopranos producer Matthew Weiner, that led our current glut. Pitched originally to HBO, Mad Men eventually landed at AMC, a basic-cable channel that was looking to burst into the newly burgeoning original-content space. The show was a critical success, with a small-but-fervent audience, and it proved that original dramas could live outside the sanctioned spaces of network TV and premium cable, especially if the quality was high—and Mad Men was nothing if not high quality.
The decade since Mad Men has witnessed exponential growth, first on basic cable and eventually with the advent of streaming services like Netflix. While much of that peak television-scripted content is niche-targeted trash, a striking amount of it goes for niche prestige, chasing viewers who now think of television as the new cinema. As cable and streaming networks throw their money around at anybody with a good pilot script, quality—or rather, superficial markers of quality—has become increasingly necessary to stand out from the pack. But this so-called prestige TV has become less about actual quality than perceived quality—these perceptions include bigger budgets, bigger stars, acclaimed film directors, salacious premises, anti-heroes, and sex appeal. It's the feeling that you're watching something that denotes seriousness, if not in subject, then in creation. Enter: The Young Pope.
The Young Pope takes the "prestige" script and flips it on its head. The show is written and directed by Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino. It features the star power of Jude Law, Diane Keaton, and James Cromwell. It's got an anti-hero for a protagonist and enough corruption and salaciousness to make the Vatican look like House of Cards. More than that, it's big and expensive, glorious to look at, and impressively weird to boot. It has all the markings of prestige, but Sorrentino isn't content to stop there. The absurd nature of Vatican intrigue is matched by Sorrentino's absurd style. The title— The Young Pope!—sounds like a joke, but Sorrentino knows it, and he leans into this in unexpected ways.
This series opens with Jude Law, in papal garb, crawling out from a literal pyramid of babies. It features scene after scene of Jude Law, in full scenery-chewing mode, being hilariously rude to the cardinals and priests who surround him. There are total non-sequiturs, bizarre dream sequences, a surprisingly odd soundtrack, and twisted theology monologues that are as long as they are silly. There are whole scenes built around Cherry Coke Zero and extended conversations about marketing strategy for commemorative plates. Oh, and a pet kangaroo. Sorrentino, while leaning into the humor, believes he's saying something profound in all of this about the absurd vacuousness of the Catholic Church as a vehicle for the true profundity of religion. But in the same way that this sort of critique begins to eat its own tail, so does the show and its relationship with its own prestige.
If The Young Pope came across as a joke in all the hype leading up to its premiere, that joke is not lost on the series itself. Only the show spins the joke around, reveling in its own sense of scale and importance to a point of utter ridiculousness. It's a witting—though perhaps not entirely witty—jab at the structures of the Vatican that, in turn, morphs into a jab at our notions of quality television.
The Young Pope would not exist without its big budget, big-star power, big director, and big platform. That is all then subsumed into the joke of its own existence: "They made a show about a young pope? On HBO?? Starring Jude Law???" It's high-minded prestige television as high-wire circus act, that is made to grab eyeballs and generate conversation. But this isn't conversation about serious ideas, or even about the basic intrigue of the plot. It'll be an extended, weekly conversation about the absurd fact that such a show exists at all. The Young Pope is peak prestige TV, for better and for worse.
Donald Trump is about to kick off his presidency with the lowest transition-approval rating in recent history, according to a new CNN / ORC poll.
As his lacklusterinaugurationplan already suggests, Trump will take the oath of office on Friday with just a 40 percent approval rating—a whopping 20 percentage points lower than Obama, Bush, and Clinton's approval ratings back when they were sworn in.
Confidence in Trump's ability to run the country has also plummeted, with 53 percent of Americans now saying they're less confident in him based on his transition efforts—a ten point jump since the election. The public has also grown more dissatisfied with how he's handled his transition. Fifty-two percent say they disapprove now, up seven points from November.
Trump supporter and congressman Sean Duffy told CNN's New Day that Trump's ongoing feud with the media—like this moment from last week's press conference—is a factor in his drop in numbers.
"What's happening here is the public fight that Mr. Trump is having with CNN and other media groups has taken some skin off his poll numbers and it's gone down," he told CNN's Chris Cuomo on Tuesday.
Not surprisingly, Trump continued that sentiment on Tuesday when he brushed off the poll as "rigged."
In a move right out of the Greek play Lysistrata or that Spike Lee movie Chi-Raq, the women of Kenya are being urged to stop having sex with their husbands until they register to vote for the upcoming August presidential election.
Mishi Mboko, an MP in Kenya's National Assembly, reportedly told women at a recent public event to "deny them sex until they show you their voter's card." The voter registration laws in Kenya are even more stringent than in the US, and citizens are required to register by February 17 in order to vote next summer, so Mboko's plan gives "Dry January" a whole new meaning.
Mboko's suggestionis part of her party's effort to defeat the current president, Uhuru Kenyatta, in the August election. Kenyatta, the son of the country's first president and founding father, is seeking his second term despite being charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court for reportedly inciting violence following the 2007 presidential elections that led to the loss of 1,300 lives. His approval ratings surged after those charges were dropped in 2014 due to lack of evidence, but the country has struggled with high cost of living and rising public debt in recent years.
Sex strikes aren't totally unorthodox in Kenyan politics. In 2009, the Women's Development Organization called for a weeklong sex strike to get the country's then-president Mwai Kibaki and prime minister Raila Odinga to reconcile and get the government running again after the contested 2007 election. As it turns out, a week without sex was all it took for the men of the country to reconsider years of political stagnation.
And elsewhere in Africa, activist Leymah Gbowee won a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to use not putting out to end the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. Considering the staggering success of such political actions, it seems like the men of Kenya will be getting to the polls if they ever want to use their poles again.
Béatrice Martin is a Montreal singer and performer behind the indie-pop Coeur de Pirate. Martin is, arguably, one of the most successful artists to emerge from Quebec since Celine Dion's reign during the 90s. Martin's debut self-titled French language record peaked on the Billboard chart at number six. From there, she began incorporating English into her work, notably with her last record 'Roses', broadening her reach as an artist. Still, though, the impact she's had on both Anglo and Francophone music is undeniable.
Martin came out as queer in an open letter on Noisey last summer after the Orlando Pulse nightclub shootings. The essay served as a way for Martin to work through and come to terms with who she is. Doing so as a public figure has its challenges: Martin's essay was met with praise and vitriol. But she was able to give voice to a personal transformation and struggle on a public platform in her own words. And so for her new column 'I'm Afraid of Everyone,' Martin will explore her struggle with anxiety, mental health, and doing that all while being a performer, public figure, partner, and, eventually, a mother.
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For as long as I can remember, I have been afraid of everyone. I can't pinpoint the exact moment when I felt socially crippled. I guess it probably comes from childhood, as most issues do. I was a dynamic kid—I mean weren't we all? My mother reminded me recently that, as a little girl, I would put on shows in front of my whole family—though I don't remember this—and that I had a great time doing so.
At that time, I was so excited to start elementary school, to make new friends. But when I got there, that's when it all started to crumble. Somehow, I became the go-to girl to bully. I was targeted by virtually everyone—even the kids who weren't my regular bullies. Every morning I took the school bus to get to school and I was forced to sit next to the trashcan on the floor next to the driver on the way there. The bus driver didn't do shit about it. I guess he was too worried about his drive, that his responsibilities were greater than my mental or physical health or he just genuinely did not care. I'd vote for the latter. I wasn't allowed on the benches otherwise something would be done to me and I remember being so scared of that. That's when I started to think people were mean and I couldn't trust them. I also believed I was probably as good as trash. Even in second grade, I was bullied by my teacher who went on to tell my parents that she thought I was "mentally retarded" because all I did was draw Sailor Moon characters in class. So now adults were after me too? If no one was going to have my back, then I better stay away from people.
This month, a new law in Illinois goes into effect that requires cosmetologists, hairdressers, barbers, and nail technicians to take a training course in how to recognize the signs of domestic abuse or sexual assault. The law, which is the first of its kind across the nation, is modeled after similar legislation in Ohio that requires hairdressers and other cosmetologists to take education courses on human trafficking. The goal? Utilizing the close relationships between hair stylists and their clients to make victims safer.
That's all nice in theory, but some stylists in the state are concerned about how it will play out in practice. For one thing, the law doesn't require stylists to come forward to authorities with information, and mandates only one hour of training in how to handle suspected cases of abuse. Some stylists also think the law fundamentally changes the nature of their job—to make people look pretty—by forcing them to become counselors. We talked with hair stylists in Illinois about their thoughts on the new law and how they see it playing out in a real-life salon.
Julie Karlson
Self-employed hair stylist in Oak Forest, Illinois
VICE: What did you think when you heard about this new law? Julie Karlson: If I wanted to be a psychologist, I would have gone to school for that.
You think it's overstepping your professional capabilities? I think we're very in tune with our clients that we would know what to say and do any way, but there's a fine line and it's very personal. Usually women [in abusive relationships] unfortunately go back to the abusers and if I give them all this information and they're like, "Oh, well, Julie my hairdresser gave it to me," how am I going to know that the abuser isn't going to come back with a gun and shoot me? No one's thinking of that.
Have you had experiences of people telling you they've been abused? One time a young girl—she was maybe 17—[told me she] had a boyfriend that slapped her once. I said, "I would think twice about continuing to date him." I wanted to tell her mother, but it's a fine line. That's the only case in 36 years.
Do you think the idea that everyone tells everything to their hairdresser is over-exaggerated? [Clients] get extreme with other things that you really don't want to hear, like about their sex lives, but with abuse? No. That's a kept secret. I would know if I saw some bruises and I would just ask, "What happened?" And if they chose to tell me, then that's a different subject. But if they chose not to, I can't continue the conversation.
Did you get anything in the mail or any word from the state about the new law? No, nothing. I've been looking it up online—zero information. Do you know what I honestly think this is? Another way for Illinois to get money. We're going to have to pay for these classes, which is unfair. If it's mandatory, then it should be free or if you have to pay for it and you truly feel like this is something you want to do, then you could voluntarily do it. I really think this is another way for Illinois to get money, and here's the poor hairdresser who doesn't have a 401k or a pension.
Rod Sickler
Rod Sickler Salon & Spa in Champaign, Illinois
VICE: How do you feel about the new law in Illinois? Rod Sickler: I see two sides: Obviously, it's important to try to help people at any point with any sort of domestic abuse. The thing that makes me nervous is where we come into play as their hairdresser-slash-counselor. If it helps people, I think that's fantastic—but I think they could've given us more info on that before they passed the law. And I think there's a fine line there to what our professional responsibility is to somebody when we start talking.
So you're concerned that this law would turn you from a hairdresser into a psychiatrist of sorts. Yeah, that's exactly right. I'm the first to admit that my clients probably tell me a lot more personal information than maybe they should or that I want to know sometimes. I think that people become very friendly with us as hairdressers, but at the end of the day, I'm still offering a professional service. What makes me more qualified to give them that [help] than any other profession that they seek out, whether it's a lawyer, whether it's their dentist, whether it's their doctor? What makes me more qualified than everyone else? Even though I've had years behind the chair speaking to people, I think there's a lot of counselors out there who would argue against [this law] as well. Even though hairdressers tend to give advice, that doesn't mean that we're qualified to give advice.
"If I wanted to be a psychologist, I would have gone to school for that." — Julie Karlson
Would you feel comfortable reaching out to authorities if a client told you they were abused? Obviously, I want to help anyone in any way that I can, but it does create for me—being a man—an uneasy conversation. It's just, for me, a very awkward position to be in. If I can help them, I'm willing to do what I need to do but maybe it's through the education that I'll learn to do that. I just don't know where to get the education yet.
Stephanie Lang
Great Clips in Peoria, Illinois
VICE: How did you feel when you learned about the new law? Stephanie Lang: As cosmetologists, we're meant to cut hair and make people look pretty, but a lot of times people come forward about their home life and we become therapists as well. We hear a lot of things that people don't normally tell other people. A lot of times clients like to confide in their stylist and think that they're just going to not say anything, but if you hear of a kid being hurt or a wife being beat or you see marks on someone's head or neck, you should come forward with it. I think that it's a good law, but we are by no means in the police force so there's not much that we can do.
Have you had instances where you've noticed a client going through abuse or someone has confided in you about that? Yes. A little kid said something along the lines of mental abuse—that they don't eat very well. When a kid tells you that, you're like, "Should I say something to the parent?" But you don't want to stir up anything in the salon, so you just kind of nod and take it as it is.
With the new training in Illinois, is there anything you're hoping to learn about how to handle situations like that? I don't know what they could teach a cosmetologist in a day of work about how to handle such information, you know? Say I'm not at Great Clips but at a high-end, full-service salon. If I have constant clients and something like this gets dropped on me, how am I supposed to stray away from what I'm doing and take care of something that's really not my area of expertise? Maybe if there's a hotline they give us where we can say, "Hey, this happened." But you're still invading that person's privacy by giving their information to somebody. What if they don't want anybody to know? Or they're not ready to come forward with such problems?
Do you feel prepared to talk to someone about such personal issues? Personally? I will talk to anybody about anything and try to help them with anything. But you get a very shy, naïve, straight out of beauty school stylist and she gets that? I don't think she's going to be prepared for something like that.
In that case, would you see regulated training as something that would help stylists in dealing with conversations they deem too sensitive or too awkward? Yeah, I think that then they should definitely go into some type of class or training that teaches them how to handle that.
In September 1999, Abdifatah Mohamed arrived at the Ifo refugee camp with his parents and younger sister from Somalia. By 2015, his family were four of 84,181 refugees residing in the camp. Abdifatah attended primary and high school within the camp and knew that by graduation he would be able to continue his education at a Canadian university in the fall.
He was sponsored by the Student Refugee Program (SRP), a program that operates in camps across Africa and the Middle East by the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) and arrived at the University of Toronto in September, 2016. His next goals? Finishing his engineering degree, becoming a Canadian citizen, and helping his little sister join him in Toronto.
SRP and the World University Services of Canada (WUSC) has supported over 1,600 student refugees over 39 years and currently operates in four countries of asylum: Kenya, Malawi, Jordan and Lebanon. To get into the SRP program, students are assessed based on a series of criteria ranging from their academic standing to language (English or French) and for many students, these tests, if they're successful, are a way to continue their education and create a once in a lifetime opportunity to make it out of refugee contexts.
We talked to student refugees attending Canadian universities, some who have come through a program and some who have not, about their story. From their childhood within the camps to the struggles they have faced as new residents, we found out what their Canadian experiences have been like so far.
All photos by Ben Agbeke
Abdifatah, Ifo Camp in Kenya, University of Toronto, 22
VICE: What was Ifo Camp like? Abdifatah: Well, I moved to the camp in 1999 when the Civil War was taking place in Somalia with my parents and younger sister. It's not a permanent settlement and people can leave anytime they want and when their home country has peaceful they are free to leave. However, we would have nothing in Somalia if we went back that's why it was so important to work hard in high school and get the grades needed for the WUSC program. My family is still in the camp but in late 2016, the Kenyan camps said they have close down some of the camps so it will be harder for my sister to start her education now. So, I will work harder to bring my family here.
So, you want them to see what Canada has to offer. What has Canada offered you? Being here has allowed me to continue my studies. I'm in engineering and I've been able to find many ways to pursue different careers in that. In Toronto, you always have good company. I can find every food, every kind of person. You can find anything. Through the WUSC committee on campus I get my tuition paid for one year, monthly allowances, and an on-campus job.
What have your biggest challenges been? The most difficult thing would be loneliness. When I got here I was alone in residence for two weeks with no laptop or cell phone. You have to have a very strong mindset when you move here because you don't have the same feeling of being with your mother here. My mother would make food and do laundry but now I have to do laundry myself. I've met many great friends in my residence now though and hopefully I will get my Canadian citizenship by the end of 2017. I would already consider myself half-Canadian anyway.
Akuei Nyol Kuol, Camp Kakuma in Kenya, University of Toronto, 26
VICE: How important was education within the camp you lived in? Akuei Nyol Kuol: Education was very important in camp life. It was the hub where you could see the light at the end of the tunnel. We didn't have a lot of freedom to do a lot of things, not even farming and we would rely on what the donors gave us. When I applied to WUSC after high school, 200 of us out of the 100,000 in the camp applied and only 20 were selected. You have very limited opportunities within the camp and the country so I felt very lucky to get the opportunity. I left South Sudan to find refugee in Kenya but I came to Canada to continue my education.
What other opportunities has Canada given you since you've been here? Almost more importantly, Canada has given me a permanent place to live and a feeling of being a legitimate citizen. Back home, South Sudanese people didn't have the opportunity to go to school. In Kenya, they could stop the bus and if they realized you're a refugee you could be arrested. Here, I feel like I am a member of society like any other Canadian and something I could call mine.
What is your next steps in the next couple years as a Canadian? For now, I don't know if I'll go back to South Sudan since the conflict is still very intense, but I don't know how soon that will be resolved. Either way I need to find a place where I can work and establish my life. I would go back home if I could get that. I play an important role in my country and refugee camp because people need to be inspired to just not wait for the next meal but to find new ways of living. I'm also majoring in geology so it would be great to get a job in that.
Do you want to help bring up the next generation within your country then? Yes. WUSC is very life changing. The few kids that get this opportunity find it really inspiring. Even if they don't make it into the WUSC program they'll still have great grades and good work ethic and it will open doors for them in other ways. But I want people to look at me to get an extra push. As someone who has been here a little longer, I find myself becoming a big brother to new WUSC students and sharing some of my perspectives on things.
Janet, Kakuma Camp in Kenya, 25
VICE: How did you find out about WUSC in the camp? Janet: In the camp, there was several agencies that would deal with the students. Windle Trust Kenya, an organization that provides schooling and training to refugees in Kenya works with WUSC. Every single high school student would only go to high school to get the WTK and WUSC scholarship. You would have to go through two interviews like it was a job. They would look at your grades and your overall story and then the second interview would be an English program that you had to pass first. So thankfully I got through everything and I hope my younger sisters can do the same.
Compared to back home, is Canada different than you imagined? In the sense of culture, yes. We do things very differently in Africa. I also didn't know how hard it would be to be away from my family. I have to do everything myself and I couldn't depend on the support from my mother.
On the brighter side, my eyes have been opened to many different opportunities involving technology, jobs, meeting different people, seeing different culture. It really changed me as person. I was going to Brock University but I had to move to Toronto to work and save up money to finish up my degree.
That must been a hard decision to make. Yes, but I knew this experience would come with it's challenges. The biggest would be living alone here, with no family members. We have the WUSC committee but at the end of day it's just me. So, I have to decide what I do with my money, what job I should apply to. But this opportunity is something I would never change.
What do you want to see in a year from now? I was in public health so in a year I want to be back in school and finish my degree. Only one more year to go! Then I will hopefully work in a health department helping people with their health.
Oh! One thing I would recommend to the new WUSC students coming in a year. Be patient when you're setting up your phone. Phone companies are a pain in the butt.
I think we all feel you on that.
Jacky, Kakuma Camp in Kenya. Brock University. 28.
VICE: What was is it like being a female refugee student? Jacky: It has been very special but difficult. In the camp, they would consider how many girls were in it so they changed the grade requirement for girls to C+. It was very helpful for girls because many of us would have less time to go to school. I tried to get into the WUSC program and when I got in there was only six girls out of 23 people.
Females take on more of the family chores and few girls will graduate because frankly, it's difficult to do well. Many of the girls get pregnant before they get to high school so they end up going to school, juggling family and chores as well. I had my son, Olise, in 2009 and thankfully my family helped me take care of him and I was able to bring him over to Canada in 2011.
What are you doing now at your university? I graduated from Public Health and I'm doing my masters right now. My first 2 years my university paid for my tuition and textbooks but after that, I use OSAP to cover my school fees and I have a part time job to cover everything else. Which I think a lot of Canadian kids do. I'm very lucky to also have a church in the community paying for my son's daycare. However, I'm hoping to get a full-time job afterwards to support my son. He's eight now.
What does your son want to be when he's older? Well he's the reason I'm going to stay in Canada because he has all the opportunities in the world. He wants to be a hockey player or a fireman. He also wants to save the environment so we will see.
Charles*, Damascus, Syria, Brock University, 21
VICE: When did you come to Canada? Charles: 2008. My story is a little bit different than the average refugee. I came here on a tourist visa at first because post-9/11 it was very difficult to get any kind of status other than that when you're from the Middle East. Back in 2008, there was dangers within Syria but not in the same nature as now. Back when the current president took power in 2005 and he began to change things slightly. We were allowed to apply for passports for the first time so that allowed me to actually travel outside of Syria. But mostly, the country began to change for the worst. I mainly moved to Canada because of my identity which made me an unusual person to live in Syria. When I was eight, I fell in love with the British culture and when I was 15, I left Islam as well, which became quite of a hassle. I felt like I would belong to an English speaking country.
How did you get you become a refugee in Canada then? Ever since I got here I've had eight visas. My tourist visa was six months than my student visas have been one year long. On a student visa you have to pay international fees at university which is a crazy amount higher than domestic.
My parents would pay for my tuition but because of the war the Syrian economy has collapsed dramatically so they couldn't pay anymore. I also couldn't pay to renew so I would have had to go back to Syria. I couldn't stay here legally so I started the refugee process. If you're inside the country I had to prove to the government that if I returned to Syria I would be in danger personally so that was a very hard process.
How did you prove that? Since I'm a male from age 18-45 there's a mandatory military service. The nicest thing that would happen to me is that I would be forced to fight and if I didn't fight the government would most likely kill me. And since I've been gone for so long, I would be viewed as suspicious and be questioned which is an understatement.
Do you feel like a refugee here despite how long you've been here? I do because of the process I had to go through to get the status. It was very traumatic. It was like waiting on a death status waiting to hear if I got it or not. Plus I had to hear and see many terrible stories while putting together my application to become a refugee.
I've already dealt with the initial culture shock but I know many Syrian refugees find it difficult. They're still dealing with the trauma from the war and many have PTSD. They also have a lot of social isolation as they experience xenophobia in smaller communities in Ontario like the Niagara region for example. I think Toronto and Montreal is better since they have a lot of great programs set up to not only help financially but socially.
What else are you planning? Will you ever go back home? I'm graduating this spring and then I'm going to Carleton to do my masters in Paleobiology and my Phd. Hopefully I'll become a professor. I wouldn't go back to Syria, even if the war does finish. This is my home now. I'm going to apply for my Canadian citizenship in 2018.
Prisons looking for innovative ways to help rehabilitate inmates may have a new option worth exploring. According to a study published today,Transcendental Meditation, which is a trademarked meditative practice traditionally taught through a series of fee-based classes, can significantly reduce trauma symptoms in female prisoners. If you're new to Transcendental Meditation, the gist is that you sit quietly for 20 minutes and recite a mantra—usually a meaningless word from your teacher—to help free your mind from conscious thought.
The pilot study of 22 inmates instructed half the group to practice Transcendental Meditation for 20 minutes twice a day, while other prisoners—the control group—were placed on a 'wait list.' At the end of four months, 80 percent of the meditating inmates showed a clinically significant reduction in trauma symptoms, which included feeling jumpy, having disturbing thoughts, memories, and dreams, as well as having trouble falling asleep and concentrating.
The research was carried out by affiliates of the Maharishi University of Management, an institution connected to the founder of Transcendental Meditation. (So yes, they had some vested interest in the results.) The findings match a previous study that found Transcendental Meditation reduced symptoms of trauma in men. Both studies were funded by the film director David Lynch's foundation, which offers Transcendental Meditation training to veterans, victims of abuse, and other at-risk populations.
Last month, several of the houses on Mike Pence's block started flying the rainbow flag to protest the incoming vice president's stance on gay civil rights and same-sex marriage. Now, an activist group called WERK for Peace has decided to give Pence a little unofficial send-off by throwing a queer dance party outside his Chevy Chase residence on Wednesday before his family moves to the Naval Observatory at the end of the week.
In an event posted on Facebook, activist group WERK for Peace invites those interested to meet at DC's Friendship Heights metro station on Wednesday at 6 PM, where they will carpool and dance to the (possibly unsuspecting) Pence homestead and show the family that gay folks can boogie with the best of them.
"We plan on leaving behind [biodegradable] glitter and rainbow paraphernalia that he can NEVER forget," the invite reads. "Get ready to WERK it and tell Daddy Pence [that] homo/transphobia is not tolerated in our country!"
During his time as governor of Indiana, Pence backed numerous anti-LGBTQ policies and once said that allowing same-sex marriage would lead to "societal collapse." Considering that Donald Trump was elected after same-sex marriage was legalized, he might actually be right, though correlation is not causation.
WERK for Peace was founded in the wake of the Pulse Nightclub shootings last year in Orlando and seeks to use dance as a means of promoting peace. For this effort, the group has teamed up with the #DisruptJ20, which is planning a number of creative actions to oppose the transition of power in DC on January 20.
Close to the island of Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, the Atlantic Ocean appears calmly serene, but the deep, blue waters conceal a striking sculptural intervention. Beneath the sea, 14 meters below the surface, stand 300 human-sized concrete artworks, waiting to be slowly subsumed by delicate marine vegetation. Schools of fish swim amongst the sculptures, which appear frozen in time.
Each aquatic humanoid is cast from the mould of an actual, living person; they wear contemporary clothing and appear to be taking part in everyday activities, like reading a book or playing on a park see-saw. Whimsical and spiritual, this project is the latest work by sculptor and environmental activist Jason deCaires Taylor, known for his mind-boggling underwater installations around the globe. His latest work, the Museo Atlántico, Lanzarote, consists of 12 evocative installations, each commenting on a current humanitarian issue.
Taylor completed his first underwater sculpture collection in 2013: the Museo Subacuático de Arte, off the coast of Cancún, Mexico. Atmospheric and soul-stirring, Taylor's sculptures appear to be thoughtful, contemplative beings. Each sculpture purposefully has closed eyes, giving the figures a pensive and ghostly vibe. "Every piece is molded from real people," Taylor tells The Creators Project. "Each of the sculptures has their eyes closed, not only to protect the subject's eyes but because it gives them a rather dreamy and timeless quality." Every sculpture represents a different type of person in today's world, creating a dialogue on understanding societal diversity, whilst mirroring the living, breathing humans they were once molded from.
Recent research by Emily Wentzell, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Iowa, examines the way that erectile dysfunction's (ED) designation as a medical problem is a consequence of culture and profit-motivated industries. "Ideas about what counts as good and manly sex are cultural, not natural or universal," Wentzell explains in an interview with Broadly. "There is money to be made off promoting the idea that manly men should have life-long penetrative sex, by selling pharmaceuticals—hence the widespread marketing of ED drugs."
In the United States today, it is generally taken for granted today that penises which cannot become stiff enough to penetrate others are failures of health, belonging to men who qualify for medical treatment. Wentzell's study points out something that may seem obvious: Erectile function is tied to conceptions of masculinity and social standing. However, as Wentzell once wrote in an older article about impotence in America, "this way of understanding non-normative erections is culturally and historically contingent," meaning the reasons we view "less than ideal erections" as medical problems are dependent upon social norms, and not some innate truth about the human body or the function of men.
"Focus on penetrative sex as the ideal kind of sexuality to engage in throughout the life course represents US cultural ideas about virility and of the male body as, ideally, a machine that never stops functioning the same way, despite illness or aging," Wentzell says. There are many different justifications given for erectile dysfunction. Today, these range from deeming it a behavioral-based issue to a psychological problem to something purely biomedical. But there are older accounts. Ages ago, Wentzell explains, it was surmised that witchcraft could account for limp dicks. Modern interpretations on the so-called problem, Wentzell says, have been motivated by industries with financial interests.
When Rick Gassko, played by Tom Hanks, opts to settle down from his life of singledom in the 1984 comedy Bachelor Party, his friends decide to throw him the ultimate bash. Yet before the donkey-quaalude-popping house party ensues, Gassko's friend, Rudy, makes a declaration that serves as the film's thesis: "Let's have a bachelor party with chicks and guns and fire trucks and hookers and drugs and booze!"
Bachelor parties are supposed to be all about strippers and cocaine and men behaving badly—think American Weddingand assless leather pants, or Very Bad Thingsand dead prostitutes, or the entire Hangover series. But lately, I've come across stories about bachelor parties that don't even try to abide by the booze-and-debauchery template. Reddit posts explicitly asking for "stripper-free" bachelor party ideas are plentiful. Friends of friends have gone to paintball arenas or brewery tours in lieu of strip clubs. Co-ed bachelor and bachelorette parties are even a thing.
So, what's the deal? Have later marriages contributing to a more mature, anti-stripper outlook? Were more grooms and bachelor-party planners considering themselves feminists, and hence less likely to get excited over aggressively macho rites? Are brides-to-be nudging their future hubbies away from boyish antics?
For Brian Cook, 27, who got married two years ago, it was none of the above.
"I was just trying to spend time with my friends. If you're going to a strip club, you're not really talking to people. You're sitting there and spending a lot of money," Cook said, reflecting on his bachelor party in Atlantic City. "At least half of the people you're with probably don't know how to handle themselves in that environment either."
During the planning process, Cook told his best man he didn't want any strippers involved. He saw the party as a reunion, since their friends had spread out across the country after college. So they grabbed dinner, gambled, and got drunk in the hotel suite. But when a few partygoers parted ways with the group for a strip club, Cook understood. "It's kind of a cultural expectation, which is why I think some guys were like, 'Oh, we'll go do that.'"
It's an expectation that also crossed the mind of Drew Lamb, 24, who celebrated his bachelor party in a cabin outside of Nashville. "I remember one of our buddies asking, "Oh shoot, do we have to make sure there's a stripper?" he recalled.
Short answer: no. Instead, Lamb and his closest friends went hiking through a state park, grilled, smoked cigars, and passed out around the cabin after copious amounts of alcohol. For Lamb, the decision to not schedule a stripper in the festivities was a fairly simple one. "It just was not something I think any of us wanted to think about, ethically," he said, partly in jest. "Like afterwards, when you wake up, and you're like, 'Is she paying for college? Is she OK?'"
"One stripper in a hotel suite with a pole or something—that's like your fathers' or grandfathers' bachelor party."
Men have been getting together to celebrate nuptials for a long, long time. As far back as the fifth century BC, Spartan soldiers were believed to commemorate with a feast and toast in solidarity to the groom's final night as a single man. In response, "the soon-to-be wed pledged his continued loyalty to his brothers-in-arms," wrote David Boyer, in Bachelor Party Confidential.
That was basically the vibe of American "bachelor dinners" in the 19th and early 20th centuries. One exception was a 1896 Manhattan stag party thrown by a grandson of P.T. Barnum for his brother, which was supposed to boast a 17-course dinner and a scantily clad belly dancer with the stage name Little Egypt. When cops got wind of the party, they shut it down before any naked debauchery could unfold.
But what used to be scandalous became the norm—and now may be passe. Lee Abbamonte, an entrepreneur and professional adventurer turned bachelor party planner for the elite, told me that his clients weren't as enticed with the classic Sin City fare. "One stripper in a hotel suite with a pole or something—that's like your fathers' or grandfathers' bachelor party," he said. "The trend these days is experiential."
Every month, Abbamonte fields between 20 to 30 requests from groomsmen asking to help them plan a legendary soirée. But he doesn't handle anything to do with strippers, alcohol, or drugs. Rather, Abbamonte assists bachelors in chartering private jets, planning parties in far-flung cities like Dubai and Kiev, and ultimately crafting the experience of a lifetime at a hefty price. (He charges $1,000 for an initial phone consultation; on average, his clients pay him a total of $20,000.)
"They're looking for experiences: flying fighter jets, going to Eastern Europe to shoot tanks," Abbamonte said. "People want to do things they wouldn't normally do."
OK, so your average bachelor and his crew can't afford that kind of partying. But even outside the One Percent (at least, for the majority of men I spoke with), the prospect of ogling women in a strip club seemed more lackluster than lustful.
"Strippers aren't getting what they want. Guys in the audience aren't getting what they want," said Theron Spiegl, 27, who is having his bachelor party this year. "It's a bunch of people exchanging money for a really sad imitation of sex."
A handful of men I interviewed also spoke of feeling awkward or out of place around strippers. Others expressed confusion at the thought of whether it's misogynistic to believe that because a woman is stripping it means she's financially struggling. As Robb Hartman, 23, explained it: "I think it's unfair to assume everyone who strips is down on their luck. Some women do it because they want to, and they feel empowered."
Hartman makes a solid point, though he still didn't feature a stripper at his own bachelor party in Florida for several reasons. First, he'd opted to play laser tag with quasi-decommissioned weapons at a place called Hard Knocks and dine with friends at a Brazilian steakhouse. Second, Hartman didn't want to traipse into what he considered to be a moral gray area. "It doesn't feel right to watch a stripper, because my wife is not this person," he said. "It's ultimately not what I wanted to do."
There's also the argument, says Abbamonte, that the "preponderance of things" on the internet is what further takes away from the novelty of the ritual. And maybe he's onto something when it comes to offering an experience: A recent study published by Airbnb reported that travel is more important to millennials than saving for a home, suggesting that the current generation values adventure over long-term investment. Evidently, it's an idea that now seems to carry over to bachelor parties.
"More and more people are planning these extravagant, expensive bachelor parties over the world," ex-bachelor Stefan Bergeron, 30, said. "Now you'll hear, 'We're going to Iceland! We're going to Mexico!'"
Though Bergeron didn't go global for his own bachelor party two years ago, he did plan an excursion of sorts on Lake Michigan. After renting a bus, Bergeron and friends went salmon fishing, and ended the night at a supper club in Wisconsin for dinner and cocktails. "There were very much no strippers involved, except for the fish," he joked.
Today, Bachelor Party is sadly dated, and not just because it's a schlocky 80s comedy. It seems "hookers and drugs and booze" have now been temporarily retired for salmon, suit-fitting parties and "hangover-free" weekends away. But was there anything left of the elder bachelor party tropes? Was there no residual desire for one "last night of freedom" before settling into an adult life 'til death do us part?
"I haven't felt like I needed freedom or wanted that or had it even cross my mind," said Scott Miller, 29, reflecting on his bachelor party in Miami last August. "Marriage has become even more of a partnership."
"My wife's career is as important as mine, and we're a team," he added. "Gender rules are no longer the norm."
Angela Almeida is a freelance journalist currently based in New York City. She has written for the Atlantic, Reuters, and the Guardian, among other outlets.
On an all new episode of NOISEY, we head to Nashville to meet the hustlers, rebels, and outsiders trying to make it big in the country music capital of the world.
NOISEY airs Tuesdays at 10 PM ET/PT on VICELAND.
Want to know if you get VICELAND? Head here to find out how to tune in.
To be clear: No, we don't need another docuseries that takes apart the minutia of the Nicole Brown/Ron Goldman murders. But that won't stop anyone from making one, because true crime will always be relevant—doubly so when it's about a case that infiltrated our culture and our daily lives.
The latest, Is O.J. Innocent? The Missing Evidence, comes from Investigation Discovery, the best true crime network that you haven't been watching. It isn't exactly great, but it's compulsively watchable. The six-part series (four episodes have aired since Sunday; the final two will premiere tonight) is narrated by Martin Sheen, just one of a long list of things about the series that doesn't quite make sense. But what doesn't make sense also doesn't really matter: The Missing Evidence knows that we're here for nonsensical theories to obsess over and pick apart. We're here for television to tell us why we were wrong.
The center of the docuseries is private investigator William C. Dear, author of a book aptly titled O.J. is Innocent and I Can Prove It; he's determined to prove his theory by enlisting the help of Rhode Island police sergeant Derrick Levasseur (previously seen on the reality TV show Big Brother—again, nothing makes sense) and forensic psychologist Kris Mohandie. Dear believes that it was O.J. Simpson's son Jason who actually committed the murders—possibly because he was upset that Nicole did not come to his restaurant for dinner.
There's "evidence" found in journals where Jason mentions a knife and references Jekyll and Hyde, as well as a photo of Jason wearing a black knit hat similar to the one left at the crime scene. Further proving his theory? Afterward, Jason was only photographed in gray hats. There's confusion about the established timeline (Nicole's watch stopped before the prosecutors said the murders occurred, possibly broken in the scuffle) and a wonky alibi (Jason's time card for that night is handwritten, but the other dates are typed); there's also a knife that Dear retrieved from Jason's old public storage facility, which may (or may not) have blood in the sheath.
Levasseur and Mohandie begin to work the case, often skeptical, but keeping their minds open. They investigate the watch, the two-footprints theory, some blood on a sock, and bring their concerns to Tom Lange, retired LAPD detective and lead investigator on the case. Lange promptly refutes them—almost comically so—speaking sternly but with the wariness of someone who has spent more than two decades facing the same questions, and who no longer gives a shit about alternate theories. If you found yourself slowly coming around to Dear's theory, Lange shuts you down, too—until we switch back to Dear's adamance that it was Jason.
That's the key to The Missing Evidence (and similar true crime docuseries): It questions your knowledge and flips contrary evidence in a way that maybe, possibly, could prove the opposite of what's established. There is nothing particularly damning in The Missing Evidence—just a lot of little stories that you can shove together like slightly off puzzle pieces. They don't quite fit, but you can at least see the finished picture. There's an anonymous interview in a shadowy staircase with a person who recalls that Jason once slammed down a payphone; a handwriting expert who provides insight to Jason's brain; and, in one of tonight's episodes, a focus on Simpson's infamous If I Did It maybe-confession book, in which Simpson imagines that he would've had an accomplice—surely that's evidence of a father-and-son murder duo.
Dear's own undoing might be his complete obsession with the "evidence" he's clung to forever. He says he wants Mohandie and Levasseur to speak up if they have doubts (if he is proven wrong, Dear says, he will apologize publicly), but when they do, Dear often doubles-down on what he already believes. It feels less investigation and more personal obsession—"This is a note that I pulled out of [Jason's] trash in 2000," he deadpans at one point—especially when he reveals that he's hired a private investigator to follow Jason around, and shows us the tapes. The Missing Evidence is both ballsy and incredibly stupid: It takes gall to go full-speed ahead with a televised theory like this, and it might result in a lawsuit akin to Burke Ramsey suing CBS. (Each episode begins with a Martin Sheen–delivered disclaimer that these opinions "represent just some of the many conceivable scenarios" and "we encourage viewers to reach their own conclusions.")
It's highly unlikely that The Missing Evidence will drop a major bombshell and solve the case tonight, nor will Dear concede that he's wrong. Instead, it will likely play out like most docuseries of this kind: ending on a question and ultimately adding nothing, which is less of a reflection of the case and more of the audience. While watching the episodes, it's so tempting to believe in what's being told to us even if those beliefs disappear when the credits roll. The Missing Evidence works well enough to change our minds for just a few minutes, but it's quickly clear that it's not so much indisputable facts and hard evidence, but instead the compelling, authoritative nature of television that's more convincing.
The first time Allison went out in public as a woman, she agreed to go a restaurant with a friend under one condition: "only if they would do all the speaking," she recalled, "because I was so concerned about my voice."
She's not alone in her self-censorship. While not all transgender people transition, and many of those who do are unconcerned with "passing" as the gender with which they identify, some others wish to retrain the sound of their voice to better match the gender they present as. Those who do hope to boost their self-confidence; for many others, a disconnect between one's voice and appearance can lead to interpersonal conflict and gender dysphoria.
"When you first start coming out, passing is really important," explained Allison, who, like many others in this story, preferred to be identified by her first name to preserve her anonymity. She explained that she, like many other trans people, wanted to blend in and didn't want others to make disparaging comments about her transition. "Voice is a huge gender cue," she noted.
"Every time I get misgendered over the phone, it hurts," said Alex Zandra, a game designer in Montreal. "It's always a dig, like you're not doing a good enough job. Like I'm not good enough at showing my gender."
Laura Kate Dale, a journalist, recalled using the game World of Warcraft to experiment with gender years ago, presenting as a female player to others in her online guild. But when they repeatedly asked her to join them via voice chat, she refused, out of fear of their judgment.
"I would always make excuses," she said, "and the more I refused to do that, the more that people started to suspect maybe there's something you don't want us to know."
Finally, one of the other players asked about her gender point-blank; when Laura revealed that she hadn't always presented as female, other guild members accused her of betraying their trust and cut off contact.
"When people only feel that they can communicate with a percentage of themselves, they're stuck in a different kind of dysphoria," said Seattle-based Speech Pathologist and Voice Clinician Sandy Hirsch. "They're stuck in a place where they can only parcel out pieces of themselves instead of everything."
For a long time after her mute restaurant experience, Allison was simply resigned to the idea that the voice she heard when she spoke might never feel natural to her. "I reached a point where I didn't care," she said. "I am who I am, I'm transgender. If I sound male, that's just how it is."
But her frustrations still grew. "One day I was in a transgender support group, and a representative from an NYU speech group came and said they were focusing on the transgender voice," she said. NYU Steinhardt's Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic was offering individual therapy for new clients; Allison jumped at the opportunity.
At first, she said, "you walk out of the sessions like, 'why am I doing that?'"
"For example," she added, "you work on blowing into a straw, making a sound or working on your pitch, like, 'EEE! OOO!' And you work on lip trills or tongue trills, pitch slides. Those things are like, 'what does this have to do with me sounding more feminine?' Well, we're working on retraining our voice to create words and sound in a different way."
"It was surprisingly simple," said April, a trans woman who worked with a vocal therapist in San Francisco to retrain her voice. "The first thing we did was use a computer to figure out where the resonant frequency of my voice was." Then she obtained a tone-generating app on her phone, and would hold it up to her ear and hum a particular note that helped her find her natural, female voice. She says that, at first, she was doing this three or four times a day, but was able to refer to it gradually less, until she no longer needed it. By humming along to the higher-pitched tone, she was able to find that tonal space with her vocal cords, a process that eventually becomes muscle memory.
Pitch training, like April practiced, is just one component of what makes up a complete vocal training program. Others include finding one's vocal resonance, or changing the way one's voice vibrates throughout the body and assigning it timbre; changing the way one enunciates and adds inflection to words; and training one's vocal range to hit higher or lower notes in everyday speech.
When Alex first pursued vocal therapy, the changes were so subtle that at first they went unnoticed. Every day, she'd take a long walk on a deserted bike path to work, quietly practicing and listening to herself far from anyone who could hear. "After a couple of months, I called my dad and left a message, and when he called back he said he was surprised by my voice," she said, a defining moment in her transition.
"Our voice partly defines who we are," said Kathe Perez, a Denver-based speech pathologist, who co-developed what she believes to be the world's first transgender voice training app. Called EVA (or Exceptional Voice App), it provides vocal coaching lessons to help trans women feminize their voices (and trans men masculinize theirs) via pitch retraining and recorded voice exercises. "Our vocal tone expresses who we are," she said. "It really is our heart and soul."
Most trans-specific vocal modification is targeted to women, since men's voices tend to dip naturally when they take testosterone. But Brice, a trans man in California, still sought some coaching from friends. As he's learned to push his voice deeper into his chest, "I feel like I've been invited into the Bro Club," he said. "Guys assume that I'm a dude. If you're a guy, and you're interacting with guys, there's a lot of 'man' or 'dude' or 'boss,' and as a woman you don't get any of that at all. It's like, 'have a good day boss,' and as a woman it's just 'take care.'"
After receiving treatment at NYU, Allison says, "I feel like I can just flow in general society, without wondering, 'am I safe? Are people going to notice? Are mothers going to move their kids away from me?' I can go anywhere I want, I have confidence. I can take the subway or catch a cab. There's never any concern." Now, when friends visit her in New York, she's the one taking them out to restaurants.
"When people are afraid to communicate, they only give so much of themselves out," said Hirsch. "We all hide parts of ourselves if we're in a situation where we feel it's not safe. When we feel confident in our ability to communicate—this applies to everybody, not just trans people—we feel we bring all of ourselves to the table. Life is therefore richer, and maybe more interesting. And certainly safer."
Convicted military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning saw the remainder of her 35-year prison sentence largely wiped out by President Barack Obama Tuesday, paving the way for her release next year, the New York Timesreports.
Manning has already served six years of her sentence for leaking classified military information to the increasingly controversial transparency outfit WikiLeaks. In her time as a transgender prisoner in a male military prison, she has tried to commit suicide twice and also gone on hunger strike in an effort to protest the conditions of her confinement. Now that Obama has approved her commutation application, Manning is set to leave Fort Leavenworth prison on May 17.
In 2010, Manning pleaded guilty to stealing 700,000 military files as an army intelligence analyst in Iraq. The files revealed new details about treatment of detainees by Iraqi military officers and information about the actual number of civilian deaths in the Iraq war. Perhaps most explosively, Manning helped unearth video of a US helicopter strike near Baghdad that left two journalists dead. After pleading guilty in military court, she was convicted of additional charges as well and slapped with a 35-year sentence—the longest punishment in American history for someone convicted of leak.
Obama was seen as Manning's last hope for freedom before Donald Trump took office, and shortly after the election, a White House petition pled with the outgoing president to commute her sentence. That petition reached 100,000 signatures last month, ostensibly requiring the administration to issue an answer within 90 days.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest commented on the application Friday, drawing a contrast with pleas for an official pardon for leaker Edward Snowden.
"Chelsea Manning is somebody who went through the military criminal justice process, was exposed to due process, was found guilty, was sentenced for her crimes, and she acknowledged wrongdoing," Earnest said. "Mr. Snowden fled into the arms of an adversary, and has sought refuge in a country that most recently made a concerted effort to undermine confidence in our democracy."
