Black History Month: Zelda Wynn Valdes

You may not have heard of Zelda Wynn Valdes, but you’ve certainly seen her designs. The fashion designer is credited with creating the original Playboy bunny costume. The work of the trailblazing fashion designer/entrepreneur highlighted the coveted hour-glass figure in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1948, was the first Black designer to open up her own shop on Broadway. Valdes created gorgeous gowns many stars like Mae West, Joyce Bryant, Josephine Baker, Gladys Knight, Sarah Vaughan, Dorothy Dandridge, Ella Fitzgerald and countless others. Later in her life, she created costumes for the Dance Theater of Harlem, and Zelda Wynn Valdes also helped found the National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers. She died in 2001 at age 96.

Check out some of her work.

Happy Black History Month! 

What a fucking way to find out.

It means practically nothing but whatever.

i need to stop finding things out through edits of this exact meme

me and also me

Some of my favorites.

Rethink homelessness

This makes me so sad

Homeless people are people too, i hate how some “forget” that

this week in I Am Very Smart: having enough money to go to the opera, museums and concerts correlates with having enough money for food, shelter and basic health needs

They controlled for socioeconomic factors though! The people who conducted this study knew that people with lots of money to attend the opera were also more likely to be able to afford basic necessities, so they controlled for it in their analysis. The fun thing about statistics is that you can control for different confounding factors so you can look at the effects of one independent variable (opera or whatever) on the dependent variable (mortality). Part of being critical of potential biases is actually reading the article and knowing what to look for.

In addition to that very good point about controlling for socioeconomic factors, the article says a single museum or concert per year makes a difference. Most cities have free community concerts (some even have free opera performances!) and museums that are either free, pay-what-you-want, or at least have specific days/times during which they are free or at a significantly reduced cost. Many libraries (which are free) provide free museum passes to card holders. In fact, the article quotes a museum worker who works at a free art museum in Baltimore.

If you actually read the article you would also read that educators are excited about this study because it provides evidence that the arts should be made more accessible financially - by restoring arts programs in the public schools, for example.

Also, “Advocates said the study was also a reminder of how critical it is for the arts to be more accessible to Americans of all incomes.” Linking to the article so it’s easier for people to get to cos it’s a good read.

CURRENT MOOD:

This is glorious and even thought it doesn’t fit in the range of all the paranormal, I MUST share

It works like this: You tell Kitestring that you’re in a dangerous place or situation, and give it a time frame of when to check in on you. If you don’t reply back when it checks your status, it’ll alert your emergency contacts with a custom message you set up.

It doesn’t require you to touch anything (like bSafe) or shake your phone (like Nirbhaya) to send the distress signal. Kitestring is smarter, because it doesn’t need an action to alert people, it needs inaction.

MORE INFORMATION

reblogging because this is seriously amazing.

This shouldn’t even be an app this should be an integrated feature into all phones on every OS

Ok, guys. Thi is really important. You have to reblog that and read the whole article.

You can never tell. As far as we can’t handle back maniacs, PLEASE, prevent yourself <3

26-year-old Jamarion Robinson’s grandmother Beverly Nixon said her grandson was bipolar and schizophrenic. Still got shot 76 (!!!) times. Would a white person get the same treatment?

The witness said he saw more than a dozen patrol cars at the complex where US Marshals killed Robinson on August 5, 2016. Why were there no behavioral specialist? Surely one of them would know how to interact with a bipolar schizophrenic better than the police.

I’m absolutely disgusted.

Here’s Jamarion’s mother’s GoFundMe in case anyone is willing to help.

#JusticeForJamarion   #BlackLivesMatter

Oh god ..

this is how much they’ve raised as of June 26th, 2020.

Where do you think your characters would be today? (aka the cast ignoring what actually happened because they know who REALLY should have ended up together)

the stonewall inn is about to collapse and they are trying to raise $225,000 before pride months ends!! any amount and share is help!!

If you were about to donate to that fundraiser but give a shit about the founders of pride redirect your money to

Homeless Black Trans Women Fund (supports a community of Black tans women in atlanta who are homeless +/ sex workers)

F2L Relief Fund (provides commissary, legal aid + medical care to queer + trans people of colour)

Kween Culture (provides programming towards social and cultural empowerment of Black trans women)

Trans Justice Fundraising Project (supports grassroots trans justice groups organizing around racism, economic injustice, transmisogyny, ableism, immigration, and incarceration)

my anthropology textbook could have chosen ANY example of slang/metaphor, but they chose this one and we love to see it