Photo by Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust via Facebook

On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled to strike down a Massachusetts law creating protest-free “buffer zones” around abortion clinics. This ruling was a solid win for free speech—and the pro-life zealots and militant teenagers who spend their days lurking around Planned Parenthoods trying to convince women entering that they are about to make a huge mistake.

The case, McCullen v. Coakley, revolved around a 2007 state statute that made it illegal for abortion opponents to go within a 35-foot radius of an abortion clinic. The law expanded on previous restrictions. It was passed in large part because clinics in Massachusetts and across the country spent most of the 90s and early aughts under siege by pro-life protesters, whose tactics for stopping abortion ranged from aggressive harassment and intimidation to straight-up terrorism. Supporters of the law, perhaps understandably, claim that the buffer zones are necessary to protect the safety of clinic workers and patients. But anti-abortion activists say that the law violates their First Amendment right to free speech, specifically their right to quietly talk to strangers about unborn children.

In a surprisingly narrow ruling, the court agreed that the Massachusetts buffer zone law infringes on the constitutional rights of abortion opponents, but acknowledged that the state also has a legitimate interest in protecting abortion services. Basically, the ruling says that states can pass laws ensuring clinic safety and access, but not at the expense of the First Amendment. The Massachusetts buffer zone law goes too far, the court said, burdening “substantially more speech than necessary to achieve the Commonwealth’s asserted interests.”

The state asserts “undeniably significant interests in maintaining public safety on [its] streets and sidewalks, as well as in preserving access to adjacent healthcare facilities,” Chief Justice John Roberts elaborated in the majority opinion. “But here the Commonwealth has pursued those interests by the extreme step of closing a substantial portion of a traditional public forum to all speakers.”

Noting that Massachusetts is the only state to impose a blanket 35-foot buffer around all abortion clinics, the court points out that other states have figured out ways to address concerns about access to abortion that don’t put such a heavy burden on free speech. “A painted line on the sidewalk is easy to enforce, but the prime objective of the First Amendment is not efficiency,” Roberts writes.

Interestingly, the court’s ruling seems to particularly focused on protecting the rights of “petitioners” like 77-year-old Eleanor McCullen, the lead plaintiff in the buffer zone suit, who has been described as a “grandmotherly” activist who stands outside Boston abortion clinics and quietly tries to persuade women not to go inside. In his opinion, Roberts emphasizes the difference between this type of “sidewalk counseling” and the more violent, aggressive protests that the buffer zones are designed to contain.

McCullen, he writes, “will typically initiate a conversation this way: ‘Good morning, may I give you my literature? Is there anything I can do for you?’”

“Petitioners are not protestors,” he adds. “They seek not merely to express their opposition to abortion, but to inform women of various alternatives and to provide help in pursuing them. Petitioners believe that they can accomplish this objective only through personal, caring, consensual conversations. And for good reason: It is easier to ignore a strained voice or a waving hand than a direct greeting or an outstretched arm.”

For abortion supporters, it’s tempting to dismiss McCullen as a red herring, a cozy decoy that masks the real menace of abortion clinic protesters. But sidewalk counseling is actually one of the primary strategies of the grassroots anti-abortion movement. Activists like McCullen are a constant—and often the only—anti-abortion presence in front of many facilities. The goal, according to activists, is not to scare clinics out of business. They are trying to take advantage of women who may be having doubts about their abortion choice and convince them that having the baby is a better option.

“The people that are out there at the abortion clinics are out there to help women,” said Cheryl Sullenger, the senior policy advisor for Operation Rescue, one of the more militant grassroots pro-life groups that essentially serves as a training camp for pro-life activists. “They don’t want to attack anyone.”

Tactics vary: In Albuquerque, for example, an ancient activist named Phillip spends most afternoons perched on a ladder behind the parking lot of an abortion clinic. When women enter or exit the clinic, he pops up above the fence and asks if he can say a rosary. The effect is jarring and deeply weird—but Phillip obviously isn’t there to hurt anyone. Others are more proactive: “I ask women who are going into a clinic why they want to have an abortion,” Lauren Handy, a 19-year-old activist from Virginia told me. “And then I try to figure out how else we can solve the issue—sometimes they’re in a bad relationship, sometimes it’s about money. Sometimes they just need someone to tell them that they can.”

Pro-choice groups generally don’t see any difference between “sidewalk counselors” and other, more aggressive activists, lumping together any one with a rosary and a bloody fetus photo as a potentially violent threat. The impulse is understandable: After four decades of clinic bombings, death threats, and murders—including the 1994 shooting spree at two Massachusetts abortion facilities, and more recently, the assassination of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller in 2009—abortion rights activists have probably earned the right to be skittish.

“This movement has a long history of violence,” Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America said in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday. “Let's be clear: [the] decision puts women and healthcare providers at greater risk. We will work to make sure that legislatures in states are focused on making clinics safe for women free of harassment, intimidation, and violent acts." 

The truth is, though, the pro-life movement has developed much more sophisticated tactics for shutting down clinics than barricading doors and gunning down abortion doctors. Since 2011, there have been at least 73 clinic closures in the US. About half of these closures were caused by new state laws designed to limit access to abortion, according to Bloomberg data. By contrast, there is little evidence that protesters are actually driving people away from abortion clinics.

In that sense, Thursday’s Supreme Court decision didn’t do much to alter access to clinics, but rather laid what we already know about the abortion debate in America: Being cornered by strangers who want to talk about your uterus and pray for your unborn child is obviously horrifying and invasive, but it’s not illegal. Because while you may have the right to get an abortion, someone else has the right to make you feel terrible about it. 

The VICE News Capsule is a news roundup that looks beyond the headlines. This week, TEPCO shareholders fail to shutdown Japan's largest nuclear power plant, Thailand's military government crackdowns on the media, health officials worry Pakistan's refugee crisis will spread polio, and five armed men kill a prominent human rights activist in Libya.

Photos courtesy of FSG

Emily Gould’s Friendship came to me on a January day when I felt very sick, and very sorry for myself, so I took it like a shot in the arm. The plot involves the hopes and failures of two unserious ladies living in Brooklyn; the novel, unlike most of what we might call “Brooklyn fiction,” has an easy, unliterary cadence and a low threshold for neuroticism (or self-pity). Sometimes it feels like “young adult” fiction about “adult” problems: getting or not getting an abortion, getting or not getting married. When, five months later, I interviewed Emily about the book and its themes—work, life, and balance, often of the karmic variety—I had forgotten some of the plot, but none of its lessons. Friendship is about learning to have regrets.

Emily, who is 32, moved to New York at 19, which makes it even more impressive that she looks about 24. In interviews and at parties, she has the blithe allure of her novel’s main character, Amy. Bev, the other main character and Amy’s best friend, is quieter; I imagine her to walk and talk like Emily’s IRL soul mate, Ruth Curry. Where the novel follows Amy and Bev into shambolic non-participation, the story of Emily and Ruth is a little more, you know, upbeat. In 2011, the two friends founded Emily Books, an online, independent bookstore with a feminist mission: to republish books by women that have either fallen out of print or never received the attention they deserved. Subscribers (there are currently about 150) get one e-book every month; less committal fans, like me, buy them individually on the Emily Books website. It’s a great project, winning Emily a lot of new fans along the internet’s books-cats-manicures axis.

When I started following Emily on Twitter in 2011, I had a dim sense that she had once been controversial, but also felt that we were similar enough—demographically, constitutionally, and astrologically—that any strong feelings I had about her work, I should tell to a therapist, not to everyone. When I met her in the flesh, I not only liked her a lot but also wished she could be that therapist. Emily is one of very few people who can listen to what you’re saying and then tell you what you really mean—and get away with it. She is smart, but doesn’t need you to think so. She is sweet, but not fake. I arrived at her Bed-Stuy apartment feeling like I wanted to quit New York City, if not the whole country, and I left wanting to try, which is something.

VICE: So, female friendship has really been—well, I don’t want to say trending, but…
Emily Gould: It is trending! Not to say that I invented female friendship, either, but when I started writing this, there was no Girls, no Broad City—both of which are great TV shows. There weren’t big-budget buddy comedy movies for women. It wasn’t a big theme emerging from fiction workshops. I still haven’t seen Frances Ha, because Ruth thought it was phony, and although we don’t have exactly the same taste—I mean, Ruth likes Battlestar Galactica—I trust her when she doesn’t believe in something.

Friendship deals with the loss thereof in a way that I found very true. No break-up with a man has been as devastating as estrangement from a woman I love, which feels not like an accident or an inevitability—as romantic break-ups do—but like an absolute indictment of my character.
Yes, and I think that’s because when you break up with a man, all your friends say, “Whatever, he was an asshole. You’ll find someone better.” When you break up with a woman, nobody knows what to say. It’s a very intense, private thing to end a friendship.

Did you start writing the novel as a diary?
It wasn’t so much a diary as a way of trying to describe what was happening in my friendship with Ruth. Yes, there are parts of Amy that are me, and there are parts of Bev that are Ruth, and in the beginning it’s more autobiographical, or will be assumed to be autobiographical. Amy looks like me. Bev talks sort of like Ruth. But what I wanted to do was describe our friendship as it is while writing the characters we aren’t. The plot gets away from life, and so do the characters. By the end of it, you can’t tell who’s who.

Which is the nature of friendship—sometimes. Friendship, the book, doesn’t have an ending exactly.
My book? It has an ending! That ending is much more of an ending than any of the endings I’d written; I wrote several very different ways out before deciding on this one.

It ends, but there isn’t a big resolution. The book ends with resolve, instead. A change in direction, not a full stop.
Landing a plane is much harder than flying a plane, as the cliché goes. You know how New Yorker short stories always end with, like, the action stops and then the camera pans and someone sees a bird out of their window? I hate that shit. It’s awful, and it’s like, mandatory somehow. You’re not allowed to get your MFA until you add three more sentences about seeing a bird or hearing someone mowing your lawn.

You can divide all of literature into bird people and cat people.
I’m both. I really am. I go bird watching.

Do you ever see Jonathan Franzen out there?
No, because he goes to Central Park, and I go to Prospect Park.

Oh, you knew that. Wow. You know where Jonathan Franzen does his birding.
Of course, I mean… [joking voice] everyone knows that.

When you started Emily Books, was it maybe a way to do for other women’s books—books that you love, but that had failed, or had been ignored or misread, or hadn't been published when they should have been—what you couldn’t do for your first book, And the Heart Says Whatever?
Yeah, I have had that thought before, and I do hope there’s some Emily Books analog that’s around in 40 years or 60 years to, you know, scoop me up and say like, “Hey, this book was really misunderstood.”

Have you felt misunderstood often?
I think that my first book encountered a really different cultural moment than the one we’re currently in, and that it’s actually very cheering and heartening what’s been happening in the culture over the past five or six years in regards to women writers. We’re saying that there are ways of reviewing and looking at women that are just. Not. Okay. Critics will be publicly called out if they dismiss a book in certain gendered ways.

You’re on Twitter a lot, and so are your readers. Is it dizzying to get reactions in real time to something you’ve worked on alone for years?
No. This sounds like a lie, but I’m really averse to caring about reactions of any kind. It’s like when you smoke a whole pack of cigarettes to give yourself aversion to smoking: I really, really went deep with being responsive to criticism in my 20s, and now that I’m into my 30s, I don’t feel that anybody’s opinion of my writing matters. At all. Other than Keith, Ruth, Bennett, Lucas, Anya, Miranda, and Mel. That’s it. You know? I’m past the point where I’m waiting for people to tell me about me. I know me.

What is the ideal Emily Book? We both loved Chelsea Hodson’s Pity the Animal, which just came out as a chapbook, and described her as “Emily Books-y.” What does that mean?
What makes a book an Emily Book is that it’s transgressive in some way, queer in some way, usually funny—not always, but 99 percent of the time they’re funny—and written in what I call a transparent style, which can seem like an absence of style, but which is actually really hard to pull off. We don’t go in for lyrical, finely wrought, mega-detailed MFA prose. Emily Books are more narrative-driven, usually written in the first person, almost always written by a woman, and short; in terms of subject matter, our books are about the darker weirder aspects of being alive in the world. Nothing exotic, just being 25 and living in a city.

What is the future of digital publishing?
More experimenting with the subscription model and with niche marketing. I’m really interested in experimental models, but also in the good aspects of traditional models. Mostly, I want to make sure that there are editors for books, and that writers are mentored, and that being an editor continues to be something that is possible. Free market types of publishing people are totally ignoring the editing and mentoring processes and assuming they’ll happen organically.

How often do you write at length on your Tumblr, or on your blog?
Only when I’m moved to blog a way that feels like a bodily compulsion, which at this point is once or twice a year. I’ll post on my Tumblr more frequently, but it’s usually just “I found this cool new beauty product” or “Try this perfume” or “I ate this candy. It was terrible.” I would love it if there were still really good, funny, sharp service journalism happening—anywhere, at any magazine—because that is totally what I would be doing for money.

Twitter killed the blog star. Do you feel that to be true for you?
I have a really dorky sense of humor. I love puns and doggerel and funny aphorisms, and in my more cheerful moments, I think of Twitter as a brave new expressive medium, rather than an addictive substance. It’s both. All these media, all these venues for expression, everything has a dark side and a light side, and they’re inextricably wrapped up in each other.

We used to have fun, destructive drugs, and now we have productive drugs, like pills and Twitter, that are also often secretly destructive.
I think that’s because of how professionalized our culture is, and how expensive it is to live where we live [in Brooklyn]. I hear from my 50-year-old yoga teachers that, a long time ago, you could totally have an overnight proofreading job at a law firm two nights a week, and the rest of the time, you could do what you wanted. I say all the time that living in New York City requires you to find some kind of drug. It can be yoga, or it can be meditation, or it can be drugs. Or all of the above—in moderation.

Follow Sarah Nicole Prickett on Twitter. 

Maude Barlow, image via YouTube.
Detroit is facing a mass water crisis that seems like something out of a post-apocalyptic moviescape. As the city prepares for a sweltering summer, thousands of residents are having their water shut off by the city because they cannot afford it. At a rate of 3,000 households per week since March, Detroit has made the executive decision to shut off the tap of some 150,000 of its residents for as little as being behind by two payments.

On the ground, groups like Detroit Water Brigade have popped up with emergency plans to stockpile donated drinkable water, implement affordable rainwater collection systems for portable and sanitary use, and strategies to create networks for distribution.

Detroit is a struggling city. It’s 80 percent Black and 40 percent of its residents live in poverty. Two-thirds of the houses that have had their water shut off have children—in some cases the families have had children removed and placed into foster care. The city is facing a human rights crisis that has echoes of Hurricane Katrina—a catastrophic breakdown of infrastructure with ugly race and class implications.

In Detroit too, both the state and federal government appear uninterested in assisting a city in crisis.

The water in Detroit is relatively expensive compared to other parts of the country. The price of water in Detroit is about twice the national average cost of water per month. Starved for revenue, the city’s taxpaying base—and its wealth—has fled the blighted downtown to settle in the suburbs. The remaining residents—those without the capacity to relocate—are left to bear the burden in cost. Breakdowns in infrastructure like burst and broken pipes in abandoned homes have exacerbated the issue—“we got water running just all over Detroit, in buildings—commercial, industrial, residential,” local activist Charity Hicks said in an interview.

But water is a public utility. If such a large swath of a city’s population cannot afford it at the present cost, the solution is not to turn off the tap.

Detroit’s Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr—an unelected official—says he has pushed to shut off the water in order to alleviate the city’s debts. Activists say the shutoffs are really part of a bid to privatize Detroit’s water, and that the city may have received pressure to get rid of “bad debt.” Meera Karunananthan of The Blue Planet Project, says Orr’s explanation doesn’t make sense and told VICE that “the city has cracked down on households without addressing unpaid bills by commercial and industrial users.”

The Detroit Free Press has reported that Congressman John Conyers has plans to introduce legislation that would stop the mass water shutoffs, which he considers inhumane. Meanwhile, Canada is sending mass water shipments—by the barrel—across the border both to combat the problem directly and to draw awareness to the crisis.

The People’s Water Board, a coalition of activists in Detroit that has sprung up to fight the shutoffs, just made a submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation. They were supported by Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of The Council of Canadians and a champion for the cause of international water rights. Barlow spoke with VICE by phone.  

VICE: I was just recently in Detroit and I know you were too. They're shutting off the water to thousands of homes each week in the the city. They're calling them delinquent accounts because people can't pay their water bills. I also know that the water bills are exorbitantly high. Can you talk to me a little bit about the situation out there?
Maude Barlow: It's actually a huge violation of the human right to water and sanitation, and the basic human right to dignity. The people who've been left behind in Detroit are the poorest. Largely African-American—elderly people, single mothers, many, many people without jobs—and the exodus of money and jobs when the auto industry left and went to wealthy suburbs, the cost of essential services such as water and electricity was left with the burden of the people there. So the rates have gone dramatically up in a very short time, basically 130 percent in a decade and now they’ve raised the water rates again. And they can't pay.

So what we've got here are corporations owing about $30 million to the water department in Detroit but their water is not being turned off. The poorest people among the community are having their water turned off at a rate of 3,000 residences a week. It's a violation and a travesty of human rights, and I think it's a very disturbing story of what happens when you take the worst of these policies of cutting infrastructure, cutting social security, designing all of your economics programs and policies for the benefit of the wealthy and just placing the burden on the backs of the most vulnerable among us. I've never seen anything in North America like what I have witnessed in Detroit.

Your organization, The Blue Planet Project, was instrumental in launching a complaint or a submission to the UN Special Rapporteur. What was that process like? Why is this an international human rights issue?
We were very involved in getting the United Nations General Assembly to recognize the human right to water and sanitation which happened just short of four years ago in July 2010. And from that a whole process was started whereby every government, whether they supported it or not, had an obligation to come up with a plan to ensure the right to water and sanitation for their people. And one of the obligations is that you cannot remove a right that has been granted. So to even consider taking away the right to water is a double-whammy in terms of a violation of this agreement. What happened after the United Nations recognized the right to water and sanitation, was they set up this Special Rapporteur and she takes complaints and she judges them. When she thinks they're serious enough, she then goes to the government in question and launches a complaint on behalf of the United Nations.

We put together the information with the people in Detroit and we documented it very carefully and sent it in to Catarina de Albuquerque, the Special Rapporteur. And she's already come out with a statement expressing great concern, as has the Special Rapporteur on Food, as has the Special Rapporteur on Housing. Because these are all connected. She hasn't made her formal report yet but she's already expressed deep concern about what's happening in Detroit and we expect her to be launching a more formal complaint to the Obama administration in the near future.

Do you think the federal government should be intervening and bailing out Detroit?
I do. We need to look at Detroit; it's the face of the future if we don't stop privatizing and deregulating and cutting money and funding—federal and state and provincial funding—to infrastructure and social security. Detroit is going to be the first, but not the last, city that goes bankrupt and has no facility to protect or take care of its people. It's the canary in the coal mine and I think we really need to see it that way.

There's great wealth in the United States; there is great wealth in the communities surrounding Detroit. This is a decision that was, in my opinion, a political decision as opposed to an economic decision. And it needs to involve the highest level of government both in the state of Michigan but more importantly at the federal level. And yes, I think it's—I can't come up with a stronger term than this—a social crime. That the poorest people, the most vulnerable people, are having their water turned off while the bottled water companies are still getting the water for free. Just a hands-off on the activities of large corporations. I think it's time we had some very hard questions about the economic policies that have brought us to a place like this and the potential future for many communities if we don't change our policies.

You mentioned before you thought it was a political decision to shut off the water. How do you see this as political, and how do you see this as part of a wave of privatization? I know that Kevyn Orr, is not an elected official and he's been accused of colluding with this bid to privatize Detroit's water.
He's very much preparing to privatize Detroit's water, and in fact I think that's probably what this is about. I expect the companies in question said: “We're only going to bid if you get rid of this bad debt, we don't want to deal with this, we don't want to have to worry about customers who can't pay.” And I don't know how they think that's going to happen. You take over a water service, of course you're going to deal with people who are desperate—that's a nonstarter.

But it's a political decision in that the governor of Michigan decided to declare the city of Detroit bankrupt rather than come up with a plan that more heavily taxed the wealthy people in the communities around the city. Make them pay a more fair share of both the water rates and the other essential utilities.Turn to corporations that are making huge amounts of money—where the wealth is. While ‎big companies get access to Great Lakes water free or at a low price, citizens are charged high rates. Water tariffs in Detroit at twice the national average. It's very extreme in the United States, you know that we're not going to where the wealth is. We're allowing this kind of privilege to continue while at at the same time the people who most desperately need help are falling out at the bottom. Detroit may be the worst example, it may be an extreme example, but I think it's the face of the future unless we dramatically change where we're going.

@muna_mire

Photo via Portable

In the age of pop star proliferation, how does an aging diva promote her new album? How does she compete with younger peers who drop secret visual albums at midnight? If you’re Mariah Carey, a woman famous for allegedly delaying a music awards show by showing up four hours late, you don’t do too much—Mariah puts effort into her singing, not her public appearances. For the release of her new album, she executed a two-prong publicity approach. First, she gave her album a really stupid name—Me. I Am Mariah... the Elusive Chanteuse—that guaranteed people would discuss (and mock) her new CD, and then she released a soda called Butterfly at Duane Reade.

The pharmacy advertised the soda as a “melodic beverage inspired by the magic of Mariah Carey.” When I first heard this, I doubted the drink would boost Mariah’s lackluster album sales, but I also didn’t really care. As a diehard Mariah fan, I just wanted to sit back, crank “Always Be My Baby,” and chug a bottle of Mariah-branded magic. Sadly, there are no Duane Reades in the shithole known as Boston, so I had to settle for making and drinking my own homemade bottle of Butterfly.

The Ingredients 

Mountain Dew Code Red

In interviews, Mimi looks like an angel floating on a cloud of Xanax, so I imagined, when she designed Butterfly, she wanted to give her listeners a pick-me-up. Mountain Dew Code Red looks saccharine, fitting in with Butterfly's color scheme, and jacks me up like I’m on a business lunch with Patrick Bateman. Additionally, Mountain Dew Code Red is the world’s most delicious and naturally hilarious soda. I had to drop it into my bottle of magic. 

Hello Kitty Gummies

Mariah allegedly loves Hello Kitty, so I added packets of Hello Kitty gummies to my concoction for extra flavor. (FUN FACT: Ten packets of Hello Kitty gummies have less sugar than Mountain Dew Code Red.) I expected the gummies to be adorable little cats, but they looked more like kittens that had waded out of a nuclear waste spill.

A Generic Pink Lemonade-Flavored Diet Drink

Because Mariah has allegedly gone on crazy diets, and also because it’s pink.

Cystex Liquid Cranberry Supplement

My homemade Butterfly wasn’t feeling feminine, so I added Cystex Liquid Cranberry Supplement, a UTI prevention drink, to knock it up a couple of points on the lady scale. 

The Bottle

Duane Reade sells Butterfly in a voluptuous bottle mimicking the shape of Mariah’s curves. To mimic this form, I drew a sexy lady's curves on a piece of paper and taped it to the bottle. I thought the bottle looked hot, but my roommate said my drawing looked more like an alien space invader.

The Taste

Although I feared my creation—it smelled like a scented pad—I performed a taste test, discovering the concoction tasted like a liquefied candy that had been touched by Satan’s fingers. When I asked my roommates to try the beverage, one flat out refused, claiming it might interact with her medication. The other took a sip, scrunched up her face, and then shouted, “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!?”

The Mixed Drink

Since when you google “Mariah Carey drink,” autocomplete assumes you want to search for “Mariah Carey drinking problem,” I decided to use my Butterfly knock-off as a cocktail mixer. By this point, the drink had sat in my fridge for two days; the mixture looked opaque, and the Hello Kitty gummies were waterlogged to the point where they looked like they were on prescription steroids. But once I added vodka, the liquor’s noxiousness cut down my Mariah-Cola’s cloyingness. I could only stomach a few sips, but I could also imagine gullible sorority girls slurping my mix-drink at frat parties. 

The Real Deal

After the disappointment of my Mimi-inspired homebrew, a friend revealed that she had picked up a bottle of Butterfly in New York that we could both sample. I was excited, but when we met up, her face looked grave. “It’s changed color since I bought it,” she said, convinced the drink’s pink color had previously been several shades darker. In person, the bottle looked more like a tube of fancy female lubricant than a plastic statue of Mariah’s body. To my surprise, when we sampled Butterfly, it tasted worse than what I had created with gummy bears and Mountain Dew—it tasted like a watered-down version of my pink concoction infused with citric acid-based ingredients that made my mouth feel like it was filled with powder. Somehow, Butterfly is actually more inedible than anything I could ever make with soda and a UTI prevention supplement. Only the Cockroach Monster from Men in Black would crave this poison. 

The Verdict

Butterfly isn’t going to move many copies of Mariah’s new album—for that, she’ll need some sort of phoned-in Iggy Azalea appearance or a massive concert in the Bronx. If you really love Mariah, the best way to show your devotion is not to purchase a bottle of Butterfly, but to go out and buy Glitter on DVD. 

Follow Emalie Marthe on Twitter. 

Photo courtesy of BABYGHOST

It's that time of the year again where we find ourselves drowning in emails with inbox-crippling attachments from fashion designers and PR agents, who are trying to force next season's hottest collections down our throats. Spring/Summer announcements are typically blasted out in the middle of winter, when everyone is freezing their asses off and dreaming of warmer climates as well as all of the apparel and accessories that goes along with hot weather. By default, they're pretty well received, but Fall/Winter lookbooks really get the short end of the stick, since they're pushed out during the summer months when most people would rather jump in front of an oncoming train than think about wearing more layers—even if their crotches are firmly stuck to hot, sweaty subway seats.

So to reignite our interest in body-covering fashions before autumn rolls through, we decided to ask Qiaoran Huang and Joshua Hupper of BABYGHOST, one of our new favorite upcoming design duos, to give us a few keywords that describe their new collection to help us figure out whether or not we're the “kind of girls” that would wear their clothing, if we could actually think about putting anything against our sunburned skin. We then photographed a model in their clothing and photoshopped her into different scenarios based off the phrases they provided, creating our very own GIF lookbook that is, at the very least, really sick for us to look at.

GIFs and artwork by Annette Lamothe-Ramos. Photos by Amanda Merten 

Question #1

VICE: What inspired your Fall/Winter 2014 collection?

BABYGHOST: Snowboarding. 

Question #2

How would you describe the stereotypical BABYGHOST girl? 

She's pretty confident and believes in magic.

Question #3

Where does she live?

She Lives on Rivington between Orchard and Ludlow. 

Question #4

Where would you find this girl on the streets?

Shopping with her man at Supreme.

Question #5

What other word would you use to describe her?

Ninja.

GIFS/ARTWORK BY ANNETTE LAMOTHE-RAMOS
PHOTOS BY AMANDA MERTEN
Stylist: Miyako Bellizzi 
Model: Emily Wroe

All clothing by BABYGHOST

Photos courtesy of Elegance Bratton

If you’re gay in New York City, you’ve probably been to Christopher Street in the West Village to get drunk or visit the historic-landmark-turned-gay-tourist-trap known as the Stonewall Inn. Chances are that you’ve also seen what director Elegance Bratton calls the “pier kids”—the homeless LGBT youth who congregate at the Christopher Street Pier, looking for everything from food to drugs to potential Johns. According to statistics from the National Coalition for the Homeless, 20 percent of homeless youth are gay or transgender (roughly 320,000 to 400,000 young people according to one conservative estimate). 

Filmmaker Elegance Bratton was one of these kids for ten years. To teach his family about his experience, he has spent three years filming the lives of three homeless kids—Krystal, DeSean, and Casper—for a documentary called Pier Kids: The Life. Recently, I went to the pier to sit down and talk to Krystal, one the film’s stars, about the movie, the Christopher Street Pier, and being homeless in New York City. 

VICE: How did you end up homeless in New York?
Krystal: It was a choice between going back to Las Vegas or staying in Philadelphia. I went to my brother’s house in Philadelphia after being kicked out of the house at 16 by my mother. After I had spent six months there—he had a family, and I didn’t want to impose my lifestyle on his kids—so I just went out on my own after that. After two or three years, I came to New York City and found the pier.

Once you arrived in New York, how did you discover the pier and Christopher Street?
I had heard about some of the history about the riots, but I never really knew what the street was. But when I got here, I went to the food stamp office, and they gave me a pamphlet that told me that there was an LGBT community center that had programs. Some of the kids there said they were going to the pier after some of the support groups, so I went with them. It gave me a sense of being back on the west coast, with the water and people just hanging out, playing spades and talking to friends, just finding some sense of normalcy in a situation that wasn’t normal.

What’s a typical night at the pier like for you?
I don’t come down here as much as I used to, usually only for performances now. I come down and say hello to all my family at the pier, and see what their situations are like. Some of them have housing now, which is a blessing, and they help the other ones out during the wintertime, letting them stay on their couches. But still, at nighttime, if they can’t go to that friend’s house, they come here. You can leave the pier, but you never really leave it. I feel a need now to come check on my old friends, to make sure that they’re not dead.

How dangerous is life at the pier for young queer people?
It’s very dangerous with the NYPD. I don’t care if you’re down-low or whatever—if you’re not Caucasian and you’re not going to one of these stores or restaurants on the street, you’re down here because you know the gay bars are here. So the NYPD is trying to clamp down and use fear to keep them away, but you can’t scare people away from a comfortable place to be homeless.

What have your experiences been with the NYPD?
I got stopped for walking down the street here by [an undercover NYPD member]. He approached me and tried to proposition me for sex work. I thought he was just a drunk guy, and I turned him away, and he ended up taking me to jail, saying that I was trying to solicit sex work. Sometimes just because of what [Christopher Street] is known for, they use that as a reason to arrest kids, especially when they aren’t educated enough to know the law. It’s just another way of profiling. I told them that I wouldn’t accept the prostitution charge and that it was entrapment, and it eventually got dropped.

Have you noticed a lot of drug use and addiction on the pier?
Yeah, that’s how you numb yourself. I haven’t seen it to the point where people are killing themselves, but I’ve seen situations where people feel like every day they need to be on a certain type of drunk or high or on molly, stuff like that. You also get introduced to certain things when you’re doing certain professions. Crystal meth is a big thing for a lot of the people who [work] in sex work—mostly men. Usually when we see somebody dwindling away, we call it reading or shade, but we just give them tough love and tell them that they’re slipping, and they’ll wake themselves up.

What has your experience of the shelter system been like, as a black transgender woman?
Right now, in the SRO [a single room occupancy that typically doesn’t have a bathroom or kitchen in the room] that I’m staying in, there are actually four trans women, but it’s a men’s and couples’ shelter, so they have to be there with men. If you don’t have your sex legally changed on your ID, you have to be subject to being stuck with a whole bunch of crackheads and ex-felons that don’t mind dealing with trans women or try to force them, like they would in prison, to do certain things. That’s the type of shit you have to deal with. And they have to call you by your [legal] pronoun, because that’s what your ID says, and so now all the staff members and clientele know your business, and you can’t stop them from when they walk around the corner and tell people on the street. It’s a dangerous situation—I know people who don’t go through the SRO or shelter system because of the fear of being outed as trans.

How did you become involved with Pier Kids: A Life?
I met Elegance two months after I arrived in New York. I was at the pier, and I saw him with a camera, and I was trying to ask him why he was recording some of the other kids out on the pier. That’s when he told me he was making a documentary about people who come to the pier—the different demographics and the reasons why they come to the pier. Ever since then, he was one of the first people I considered a friend here in New York.

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Photo courtesy of the author

Over the last two years, my career has seen a stark shift towards cannabis. I used to work as a music journalist, but when the opportunity arose to write about the developing legalization of my favorite plant, I changed my whole shit up. I betted that weed would become so big that I'd be able to tell stories for years—personal stories, news stories, you name it—and so far, my prediction has been right. There's a lot happening with pot, and I'm lucky to report on the topic. I recently started a new gig at Mic, where I'm covering the weed beat—it's amazing to start my day by searching “cannabis” on Google News. In between scouring through research reports and digging around for statistics, I regularly speak to lots of activists and weed industry members. It's fun as hell. I mostly find goods news, like the wave of CBD legalization in the South or the long-awaited decriminalization in Jamaica, but as I dig, I also come across stories about cannabis prohibition that make me sick. The ban of a harmless plant has produced racism and pointless persecutions. Thank god we're finally making a little progress, but things are still pretty fucked up. Here are a few things we still need to overcome. 

A Lot of People Are Still in Jail

For a long time, a big part of legalization advocacy involved drawing attention to the untold injustices of weed prohibition. There are a lot of people in jail for non-violent weed-related crimes. Authorities incarcerate blacks for non-violent drug offenses at nearly six times the rate they arrest white people, according to the Sentencing Project. We still hear these facts as part of the basic argument for decriminalization and legalization, and it has probably helped push the movement along, but politicians are doing little to solve the problem. Colorado enjoyed the full advantages of the new legal cannabis market, including millions in tax revenue, for nearly three months before a state court gave previous offenders the chance to challenge their sentences. As for inmates serving federal sentences for weed possession, you might want to put another hundred in their commissary, because they aren't getting out of jail any time soon, considering America is one of the only countries in the world that doesn't offer its citizens retroactive ameliorative relief. 

Politicians Are Extremely Confused About Weed

Watching politicians try to wrap their heads around medical marijuana is like watching a bunch of dads try to relate to their teenage kids. They want to appear open to the idea, but they are so obviously clueless about weed that you want to laugh in their faces. This isn't limited to Republican lawmakers bumbling about the idea that weed is different from heroin—or even that ass clown Jeff Sessions. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has been a true cock about pot. After myriad attempts to derail his state's medical marijuana law, he agreed to sign the bill only after they altered the law to keep smoking marijuana illegal. That's right: You can consume as much medical weed as you need in the state of New York, but you can't smoke it. Sorry if you've had cancer for years and have a treatment routine that involves smoking. Too bad that vaping is a relatively new innovation, and we don't know about its long-term effects. You don't want to make Cuomo feel weird by smoking weed, right?

Dosage Is Everything

Oh boy, the edibles argument. Cuomo's not the only one who sounds like a grumpy old man when he talks about weed. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recently wrote an embarrassing op-ed about her bad experience with edibles. She blamed Colorado, and she's right: Colorado’s edibles are way too strong for newcomers. Edibles may look exactly like regular candies, but they pack a lot of THC. It's not unusual to eat half a bag of gummy bears in one sitting, but if each gummy bear is packed with 10 milligrams of THC, the candy is going to ruin your evening. Considering no one cuts a cookie into six slices and eats one slice at a time, it's ridiculous to pack that much THC into one piece of candy. Medical cardholders in Colorado are used to digesting that much THC, but that volume is definitely not OK for out-of-towners. If there's one thing that can really fuck up the perception of weed in the public sphere, it's edibles freakouts.  

People Still Believe in Prohibition

In the 1930s, William Randolph Hearst flooded the world with anti-weed propaganda because he hated Mexicans and feared hemp paper, but the American Medical Association strongly opposed illegalizing weed in the 30s because of weed's possible therapeutic benefits. Unfortunately, evil won that battle, and weed has been illegal ever since. Over 70 years later, the anti-weed campaign is still successfully convincing people that weed belongs in the same category as heroin. Things started to tip in favor of weed legalization a few years ago, but there are still people who believe the shit Hearst started before Pearl Harbor. Look at the group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which consistently undoes its own name by hating on pot. (If you want to tell Smart Approaches to Marijuana founder Kevin Sabet the truth about weed, you can tweet at him here.) Despite everything we know about weed, people remain ignorant in America. Imagine discovering that you're under the influence of propaganda from the 30s. Wouldn't you want to punch yourself in the face?

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Mentao refugee camp near Djibo, Burkina Faso

Deep in the West African Sahel, that geographic belt between the Sahara desert to the north and the savanna to the south, thousands of refugees from Mali wait in the dust. Displaced by two years of conflict and battered by the vicious desert sun, they take shelter under makeshift tents of mats and plastic sheeting that get razed by every storm. 

In the sprawling refugee camp of Mentao in the remote northern region of the small landlocked country of Burkina Faso, its weary and frightened inhabitants are dreaming of home.

"We want to return, because we would rather die in our home land than stay here miserably," said Inzoma Ag Athadassa, a 76-year-old Tuareg herder who fled his home near Timbuktu with his family of nine. But, he added, "We are afraid. Peace has not been reestablished in Mali. Someone who fears for his life and his dignity, he doesn't return."

The 12,000 refugees at the camp, some 30 miles from the Malian border, say they are stranded. They have fled the violence in their homeland only to run straight into famine, poverty, and disease, as the food crisis in the Sahel ravages Mali's tiny southern neighbor.

"We have two problems now: the problem of Mali and the problem of life here. We are safe, but the person who is hungry doesn't sleep well, even if you are safe," said Oumar Ag Ibrahim, a 55-year-old Tuareg who left the same town of Gossi in the Timbuktu area in February 2012. "There's no life without food," he added. "We feel trapped."

Burkina Faso is one of several Sahel countries deep in a years-long drought that has claimed thousands of lives and left millions battling for survival. This year, over 20 million people in the region are facing food insecurity, and 5 million children are malnourished. While the refugees receive aid including food rations from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and organizations such as ECHO, the European Commission's humanitarian agency, international help has dwindled in recent months. "There is not enough medicine, there is not enough shelter, there is not a lot coming this year," said Ibrahim. "There is nothing to eat." 

In better times, they could venture outside the camp to buy extra food with their monthly aid allowance of 3,500 Central African Francs (about $7) per person. But as the local population struggles with drought and failed harvests, there is less and less produce to be found.

Oumar Ag Ibrahim (far left), who fled Mali in February 2012

"We go around in the villages looking for rice, millet, sorghum, and we don't find it. There is no feed for the animals," Ibrahim said. "The needs are everywhere."

Struggling to eke out an existence and longing for home, some refugees have made attempts to return. But many have since come back to the camp, bringing tales of violence, revenge attacks, and chaos. 

"The situation of the refugees is one of fear. There's some people who prefer to return home rather than stay," said Athadassa. They had left initially because they realized "certain colors" were being targeted, referring to the lighter skin of the Tuareg, a nomadic Berber people. Now those who were returning were falling victim to retaliation against "the wrongdoers—the Islamists and their associates."

Mali shot to the top of the international agenda in 2012 when Tuareg separatist rebels of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), backed by Islamist groups, seized control of the north and declared the region an independent country. But as the Islamists began to impose their vision of a Sharia state, the uneasy alliance started to fracture. The MNLA separatists and the Islamists who had hijacked their rebellion turned on each other, and when France deployed troops in January 2013, the separatists realigned themselves with the international mission and their former government enemies to beat back the monster they had helped to unleash. 

A peace initiative was signed in Burkina Faso in June 2013. But clashes continued and the MNLA declared the ceasefire dead a few months later.

In May, a renewed surge in violence between MNLA forces and the army killed dozens and sent a fresh tide of refugees spilling into neighboring countries. The government announced it was once again "at war" with the Tuareg. A fragile ceasefire has now been brokered, but the rebels have held to their positions, and, given the history, few are hopeful that it will lead to a meaningful peace.

In June, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed alarm at the deteriorating security in Mali, noting clashes between government troops and armed groups, as well as between Islamists and the MNLA. The Tuareg were suffering revenge attacks and threats from Islamists and other groups, he said. Human rights groups have also reported abuses and killings by government forces and loyalists, with the Tuareg one of the primary targets. 

"If there is no problem in Mali, what has been resolved in Mali?" Ibrahim said. "Every day you hear that that person is dead. Every day you hear of clashes. Even the day before yesterday there was a clash between MNLA and the Islamists. There are still problems—the Islamists are still in the north of Mali, and who do they look for? We are northists, we are MNLA, so as long as that is happening in Mali we can't return."

But little international attention has been paid to the country's latest round of fighting. The television cameras, for the most part, have left, drawn to newer conflicts closer to home—to Syria, to Iraq, to Ukraine. 

"In 2012 and 2013 there were a lot of partners that came to complement the aid of the UNHCR, but in 2014, everybody has gone to Russia," said Ibrahim, referring to the crisis in Ukraine. "We feel abandoned. All the world is taking care of Russia, [they think] that's where the serious problem is."

The Burkina Faso government is it struggling to feed its own population. And since it is a mediator in the Mali conflict, the presence of the 32,000 refugees within its borders is politically sensitive. Quietly, it agreed with the UNHCR in talks in May to move toward a strategy of "voluntary repatriation" for the refugees. 

A woman walks through the Mentao refugee camp 

The UNHCR appears caught between competing interests. It insists the refugees are "welcome" in Burkina Faso, yet acknowledges that given the country's own difficulties with the food crisis, repatriation should come "the sooner, the better." Following the May agreement, it began an information campaign in one of Burkina Faso's three refugee camps about what return would mean. Refugees are given advice about the risks they may face in Mali; those that choose to go are made to sign a disclaimer. 

At the same time, thew UN insists it recognizes that it is not yet safe for the refugees to go home. "We fully agree the conditions in Mali are not yet conducive [to return]," said Angèle Djohossou, the UNHCR deputy representative in Burkina Faso. The UN is not "encouraging" them to do so, she said.

But, Djohossou said, "Burkina Faso is a very poor country, and when the Mali crisis occurred, Burkina Faso was facing its own socioeconomic problems, including food insecurity, floods, malnutrition… It is an additional burden to the government." The UN is seeking extra funding to help, she added.

A senior EU official in the region said that those competing interests can "fuel tensions." As for the refugees, he said, "There is certainly the feeling that they are abandoned... The longer the stay, the worse it is." 

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The menu at Feng Mao Mutton Kebab

Last week, a grocery store in Austin, Texas, was slapped with a lawsuit after it “accidentally” sold bull penis. The cut of meat, called “pizzle,” was apparently labeled as “inedible beef, not intended for human consumption," before the store's manager repackaged it and put it out on the shelf.

When I first heard the news, I thought, Whatever, Austin can eat a dick. But then, I reconsidered: Is there actually anything wrong with eating a dick?

To try it for myself, I headed to Feng Mao Mutton Kebab in Los Angeles’s Koreatown, where bull penis is not only a regular on the menu but is actually one of their best-selling items. Feng Mao is the type of Korean barbecue joint where you cook your food over a small fire pit at your table, and the penis is sold by the skewer for just $1.50 a pop. I ordered two penis skewers, plus a few skewers of beef and short ribs to use for flavor comparison.

When the raw meat came out, it had been thinly sliced so that it looked more like dried apricots than a boner. The slices were only about the size of a quarter in diameter, which was surprising, given bulls' reputation for being enormously hung. I asked the waitress some embarrassing questions (like, “When should I take my penis off the grill?”) while rotating it over the open fire. The meat itself dripped an oil-like substance into the flames as it cooked.

Raw meat skewers, with slices of bull penis in the back.

When the waitress told me it was done, I poked at the penis with my chopsticks. The meat had shriveled and crisped over the flame, but it remained pale compared with the other cuts of beef, which had browned considerably. Then I took a bite. The pizzle tasted similar to alligator tail: chewy, tough meat with a bland and somewhat grimy flavor. The first bite wasn’t great, especially compared with the seasoned-beef skewers that sat beside the dick on my plate. But after a second bite, I decided that the crispy edges mitigated the rubbery texture and a sprinkle of seasoning redeemed the flavor. The penis was growing on me.

Beef cock roasting on an open fire

In a handful of cultures, eating penis is thought to possess special health qualities. Chinese athletes have been known to gnaw on deer penis to heal injuries, and other preparations—especially yak penis—are thought to enhance virility. In Jamaica, bull penis is stewed with rum, bananas, and peppers to create a delicacy called cow cod soup, said to be an aphrodisiac; there are similar versions of the soup in Bolivia, where where they call it caldo de cardan, and in Malaysia, where it's called beef torpedo soup. Not totally appalling when you consider that here in the American West, we eat things like “Rocky Mountain oysters”—bull’s balls, battered and deep-fried—and, you know, hot dogs.

A skewer of beef penis at Feng Mao Mutton Kebob

I managed to get through one skewer of my penis before pushing the plate away. Would I eat it again? Maybe, if I were in a place that served bull penises and nothing else. But it definitely won’t be on my grocery list any time soon.

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Living goddess Samita Bajracharya playing the sarod. All photos by the author

Twelve-year-old living goddess Samita Bajracharya doesn’t reply to questions. So her mother speaks for her. "I do think she's missing part of her childhood,” says Shoba Bajracharya as she collects offerings brought by visitors. “She misses playing with friends and the stuff normal children can do. But I like that my daughter is a Kumari because it makes me feel proud.”

Rooted in both Buddhist and Hindu tradition, prepubescent girls in Nepal’s Kathmandu region are selected to become “living goddesses,” or Kumaris, until being replaced before their first menstruation. Chosen by officials from each religion, the criteria to become a Kumari include having a “neck in the shape of a conch shell,” a “body like a banyan tree,” or being “daring like a lion.”    

There are about a dozen Kumaris throughout Kathmandu, and while many attend school and live relatively normal lives, the most important are isolated from society, only venturing outside for religious celebrations. Bajracharya is the Kumari of Patan, Nepal’s second-most-revered living goddess.

"I'm finishing my Kumari period,” she whispers. “I’m happy because I’ll get to go to school and live a normal life after this.”

In the meantime, however, she has to keep up her role as a goddess, reluctantly obeying her mother’s requests to approach the main window so tourists can take photos of this unique religious attraction.

The most important living goddess is the Royal Kumari of Kathmandu, eight-year-old Matina Shakya, who lives in a palace in the middle of the city. From there, she regularly blesses royals, government officials, and anyone else with the connections to visit her on her gilded throne.

"She is the state's source of power,” explains Prathap Man Shakya, Matina’s father. “The Kumari tradition is a unique practice, so it's an honor that Nepali people venerate my daughter. In many places people worship representations of God, but here we worship a living god.”

Current Royal Kumari Matina Shakya at the Indra Jatra parade

The Royal Kumari is paraded through the city every year during the religious celebration of Indra Jatra, one of the only times she is allowed to leave her temple. Shakya has been performing the same ritual since she was three years old.

"People criticize the fact that my daughter is trapped inside the house, but they don't know that Kumari tradition has changed. She's now provided with facilities, including an education," Prathap insists, referring to changes made in the 90s after former Royal Kumari Rashmila Shakya published her memoirs, From Goddess to Mortal.

The book, which described the lack of education during a Kumari’s seclusion—as well as the further hurdles they have to overcome to return to a normal life—led to widespread criticism of the custom.

"In my time, there was only one hour-long tuition class, but I had to be seated in the throne if any visitor came to see me,” explains Rashmila Shakya. “I had a lot of problems afterward; at the age of 12, I could only join second grade, along with my six-year-old sister.”

Rushmila is the only former Kumari with higher-education qualifications, having recently completed a master’s degree. The 31-year-old now works as an IT technician, but stresses how difficult it was to return to a normal life—partly, she says, because of the urban legends surrounding what happens to Nepal’s living goddesses when they become mortals. One, for example, is that any man who marries a former Kumari will die soon after the wedding. “That’s why I decided to write a book, because there are so many misconceptions about the Kumari tradition,” says Rashmila.

After From Goddess to Mortal was published, the Nepalese government introduced three mandatory hours of formal education a week for all current Kumaris, as well as a monthly stipend of 3,000 rupees (about $50) toward education for any former Royal Kumaris and a total of 50,000 rupees (about $830) for their marriage expenses.

Former Kumari Rashmila Shakya, who wrote the book From Goddess to Mortal

But critics still argue that the Kumari custom—regardless of the educational updates—forces girls to give up their childhoods. In 2005, human-rights lawyer Pundevi Maharjan filed a case in the supreme court stating that Kumari girls were victims of exploitation. The case was formulated on the grounds that the religious tradition violates national laws and international treaties, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child and the Convention of the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), to which Nepal is a state signatory. In fact, the 30th session of the CEDAW’s committee, held in 2004, recommended eradicating these kinds of discriminatory customs.

Maharjan tells me: "I didn't file the case to abolish the tradition, but to reform it. It's a conflict between cultural and individual rights, and my objective is to balance these two."

For all Maharjan's efforts, however, the court concluded in 2008 that the Kumari practice cannot be qualified as child labor, and that no restrictions seem to have been placed on the Kumaris' freedom of movement. The report summarized that it is the responsibility of both their parents and the local community to ensure the well-being of the young living goddesses.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped the debate. On the one side you have those opting to maintain the status quo—"Our religious traditions should remain as they are, because they preach peace and harmony among all living beings," says Hem Bahadur Karki, president of the Nepalese World Hindu Federation—and, on the other, human-rights organizations. "Some may say that a goddess doesn't need human rights,” says Rekha Shrestha Sharma, a member of the Nepalese Women Rehabilitation Center (WOREC). “But after she stops serving, she becomes human again—hence preservation of her rights is a matter of concern.”

Kumari Samita Bajracharya

Interestingly, while arguing for their rights, Sharma also questions whether the issue needs to be quite as pronounced as it’s become. “The Kumaris all feel empowered and special, even if only for a few years,” she says. “If the Kumaris don’t feel that they’ve been exploited, is this really such a significant social problem that it requires intervention from the courts?”

Representatives of other human-rights organizations go as far as to suggest that the tradition actually encourages respect for women in a largely male-dominated society. "Kumaris have a totally different childhood. But I also think that no other girl gets the kind of respect and dignity that she gets,” says the president of Himalayan Human Rights Monitor, Anjana Shakya. “Parents and society in general could learn how to treat a girl through this tradition”

Activist Anjana was born into the Newari community—the indigenous people of Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley—and has been studying the Kumari tradition for many years. “There are certain hours when Kumari can study, but the school comes to her, not the other way around,” she says. “However, there are children from the area who come to [spend time] with the Kumari. It’s definitely a different learning process, but I don’t think they’re isolated.”

When I mention the fear that Kumari could be cheated of a proper childhood, Anjana blames Western values. "I'm tired of foreign media coming and telling us what's right and wrong,” she says. “They also have to listen to us and understand that we can decide for ourselves."

Despite writing a book calling out certain aspects of the tradition, former Kumari Rashmila is still torn on the custom as a whole, perfectly representing how complex the debate has become. "I didn't have a normal childhood,” she begins, “but I don't think Kumaris should be allowed to go outside, because if they were, what would be the difference between a normal child and a Kumari?"

Follow Angel L. Martinez Cantera on Twitter.

For more than a decade, Vicar Andrew White has been risking his life to preach for peace on the streets of Baghdad, driving through bombed-out war zones to spread his message. In his quest, White has become the primary liaison between the Sunni and Shia Muslims. 

People love reminding you that Perth is the most isolated city on earth, but they rarely mention what generations in the middle of nowhere will do to a place. Local photographer James Whineray, familiar to its charms, specializes in capturing Western Australia's what-the-actual-fuck nature. His photos are a reminder of why Perth is the best city in Australia to lose your mind and get nailed to a cross.