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Thursday 23 April 2015

5 Cool Things on the Internet Right Now

If it would pay well, I would seriously consider a job as a professional collector of Internet things but in the interim, I bring you this.

1. Bloggers to Watch on i-D Online

The strangest thing just happened when I woke up from one of my procrastination nation naps yesterday; not only did I forget to PVR Empire but i-D, as in the publication I read almost everyday and binge read at book stores, included me in their list of high school bloggers to watch. Me, man. I thought it was a really cruel joke when someone tweeted me the link and then I found it to be true via email (to Emily Manning: many, many thanks). I still don't believe mostly because there are some seriously groovy kids there, like Ellie, Tolly Dolly Posh and my new obsessions, How to Survive as a Fashionable Teenager and Crybaby Zine. I highly recommend visting their blogs. i-D makes really great comments on everyone. (See it here.)

2. On Unlearning Misogyny and Slut Shaming
illustration by Ruby A.

I think it's been a pretty good week for South African brown girls because my favourite poet and natural hair god, Nova, just posted this great essay on Rookie about revisiting her old feminist critique on Nicki Minaj. It was super refreshing and reassuring to read just because, like Nova, Nicki Minaj used to incite a very sour taste in my mouth. I used to buy into things like respectability politics and I was utterly disgusted at the only modern brown girl hip hop representation I could look up to was some surgically enhanced, Black Barbie with a plethora of wigs. I know. What level of ain't-shit? But now that I'm a teensy bit older and I've come to understand intersectionality, pro-choice and actually read and listen to the things that Nicki has to say, I'm in love with her. Nova also accounts for how you can stan for someone and not completely agree with everything they say or do and that is all right. The comments section is fantastic, by the way.

3. Dope Saint Jude's Keep In Touch Video
Thanks to this lovely Elle article, I just discovered my latest obsession. And, ah, another South African girl making it happen. Dope Saint Jude is a subversive and dynamic rapper from Cape Town with one of the best overall aesthetics I've seen in a long time and on top of that she's an inter-sectional feminist and her bars are sick. The video is amazing. She makes use of Gayle, gay slang mostly used by coloured people in apartheid, makes use of all too familiar South African landscapes and motifs, such as those Telkom payphones, sportys and Nik Naks. There's been a tidal turn in South African music lately and I'm really excited that local is actually really lekker.


Also see her interviews/write ups here and here.
ELLE MEETS DOPE ST JUDE
(source)
4. Teen Queens Tavi and Amandla: TOGETHER
(source)
(source)
I don't know if there is a God but she's doing something right in a world where Amandla Stenburg and Willow are best friends and there's this interview that exists between Amandla and Tavi Gevinson. You'll know Amandla from The Hunger Games, Sleepy Hollow and more recently, her Don't Cash Crop My Cornrows video. Willow is an angel from a different planet, sent here to bring us sweet music and lovely tweets. And Tavi, oh my god: duh.

Read the interview, published something like a year ago where Tavi and Amandla speak about feminism, Rookie and the industries. Expect cool quotations like, 
"I feel like there’s something happening now – a generation of girls around our age, from a similar background of beliefs and ideas, are inspiring and influencing each other, and that’s super exciting to me. A few years ago I would have said, ‘It’s okay if my friends my own age don’t get it, because I have a bunch of adult, professional friends who do get it.’ But that’s kind of sad, because I need friends my age too." - Tavi
"...but I feel like even though the world feels big and intimidating, it’s almost calming to realise that even within the smallest thing, like a cell, there’s an infinity. And you’d think that wouldn’t be calming, that it would be disconcerting, but actually it just makes me feel that there’s an organisation between everything in the world." - Amandla

5. I SAID, "BITCH WHERE???"

'Nuff said.

What else has everyone been curating off the Internet this week?

11 comments:

  1. omg girl congrats! and thank you for sharing that essay in particular as well as the work and gospel of Amandla as well as Willow hanging out with Tavi
    i was just thinking the other day when you posted your commentary of fashion week that your blog was actually a great representation or timeslice of the internet which then reminded me of Style Rookie <3
    Thanks for your sweet comments by the way and support, it means a lot to me

    http://secret-hipster.blogspot.com/

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    1. thank you, adele, that literally makes me feel like the queen hahaha.
      i hope they (the comments) helped and that things get better x

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  2. What. WHAT. Khensani I remember last summer when I started my blog and seeing you and thinking that you were destined to become well known and similarly appreciated. Man I'm SO happy for you!! You're stuntin on everybody, keep killing it!!

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    1. WHAT! That was legit my reaction as well. Thank you so much, Kaylee.

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  3. OMG GIRL CONGRATS A BAJILLION TIMES!!! I honestly have no words for this, maybe a hundred fire flame emojis will suffice (🔥) x100

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  4. Well done! I actually found you through them, also scrolled through your blog, love it girl!

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  6. OMG congratulations a million times over khensani! i'm so proud + happy for you and you totally deserve all of this. nova's article is so real in a larger society that doesn't care about so many people, and when you are exposed to different perspectives (for a large part of my generation at least, through the everything-available-at-once-internet) it's confusing to adapt to that and to sort through what values are important to you and what your beliefs are. the styling and the art direction in addition to the sound of the keep in touch video is amaZING! i'm still wrapping my mind around the fact that we live in a world where amandla, tavi, willow (and ezra keonig) were in the same room, casually eating lunch...

    // kani
    velveteenstyle.blogspot.com

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  7. I've beeeeen internally screaming (re ID) on your behalf and we don't even internet each other like that. Go awwf. This is a good collection of things. I enjoy when women reach back into their early days in this learning in their lives in their politics. It's the best. We are all learning and growing and becoming our best selves.

    Listen, I've been trying to write about the Dope Saint Jude vid and ~existence~ for a while but I'm lazy/the vibes don't feel right/im not worthy.

    You did good.


    Also, what Jada wrote her fb page about white american feminism, her womanism, willow's feminism, hilary clinton et plus made me say phew!

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We can also talk about the overweight, grey cat I'm gonna name Atticus one day or how you're feeling.

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