‘Action Figures’ Fun and Fitness Merch Collections – Dolls for Boys?

You know you’re famous when….. some company wants to make you or your character into a doll. (Or maybe this is about me just finishing streaming Dollhouse? )

• Do the action figures help promote fitness when they’re sports stars?
• Do they promote boys playing with dolls, and in what way? Do dads ever worry their son is just a bit too interested in them?
• Or do they just promote some corporation wanting you to spend money on their collectibles?
• And then there is the factor that might actually get the parents involved: These dolls can be worth a fortune! But only if they are in mint condition (never taken out of the box, never plaid with) and/or rare.

But what is in it for the person who poses for the doll? I got my daughter a ‘Michael Jordan’ doll (feminist thing – I wanted to provide an alt to ‘Barbie’) when they were out.

I know he got a share of whatever merch his name was involved with.

• But does everyone who poses?
• Or just those with clout? With good contracts, agents, lawyers, managers….attached to a good, reputable studio.
• How long are the contract for where a company can use their image for these things? * And do the people have a say in how they are used or marketed?
• Can they sue if the company does something offensive with the doll?
• Does a star ever say, ‘ya know, I’m feeling overexposed here’?
• Do the stars ever feel like they’re infantilized?

What do you think of these plastic disposables? Are they somewhat questionable in what they promote and how they do it? Or should this be filed in the ‘too woke’ category?

…….

Bobbleheads include sports stars, pop culture figures, and notable people wikipedia definition

……

An action figure is a poseable character toy figurine made most commonly of plastic, and often based upon characters from a film, comic book, military, video game or television program; fictional or historical. These figures are usually marketed toward boys and adult collectors wikipedia definition

‘Sex Sells!’ – Marketing and Merch in Fashion

Society has gone back and forth on whether nudity is actually sexy or not. I’m not sure where you stand on this, but nudity to me is only sexy if it’s someone I actually want to see nude. (That famous scene in American Gigolo where Richard Gere gave us a full frontal view. Yep that worked/works for me!) To someone else he might have gotten marks for fitness if not for body parts they like/d)

Some people, including women, are sexier to me when they have cute lingerie on and are fit, or wearing a sexy outfit.

And some people it’s all about the ‘tude! Sassy, flirty, fun, wicked, smart, funny…. and they just rock. They are unique. For exactly those same reasons, I used to have a crush on both Warren Beatty and his sister Shirley MacLaine. When they were fit and special, they could not be beaten. Not in my books.

…..

So if someone were marketing to me, how would they go about meeting my ideas of what sexy is? Unless they had clones, they’d be better off sticking to ‘tude or clothes than naked bodies.

…..

And if they wanted to sell me stuff based on that sexy ‘tude, it’d be lingerie or clothes that skim their fit bodies and outlast one engagement. That are fun and unique. Appeal to my senses, touch (smooth, soft) and visual (colourful).

….

I’m just not sure that they’d want my taste though. I tend to run with high end designers like Coco Chanel, Donna Karan. Classic, simple lines and silhouettes that move with the body. The kind you pay an arm and leg for. Because they stand the test of time. They don’t do fads. The kind that don’t do nude. Yet they make women look sexy, fit and stunning. So you want to slowly take her clothes off. Or maybe shove her against the wall and lift her skirts. Because the lady may be a sex kitten too.

….

If you were to build a picture of who could sell you things based on sex appeal, and that alone, who would it be? Would they be nude, or barely showing their ankle? Do you want a Rubenesque woman, or Twiggy? Do you want Dwayne Johnson with all his bulgy muscles? Or Sheldon? (You never know, do you?

……

Yes. body image and dress are cultural.

….

Or do you just want to see the thing they’re selling? Keep the people out of the picture all together.

….

Companies spend a fortune investigating where their target audience is on these scales. And if you’re good at predictions like this, you’re hired for life.

‘Workers of the World Unite!’ Karl Marx

A lot of people discuss unions and free markets like they are available for all, without caring whether the goods and resources are actually worthy of purchase.

But these days, it seems like the goods are meant to break down so they have to be continuously remade. To keep grunt workers employed. Rather than skilled employees showing their craft.

And the goods sold most frequently are ones for our convenience, to speed up our day. Fast meals, fast cleaning, fast interaction (social media, esp text mssgs), fast driving…. So we can work longer hours.

The price depends on how often the product or service is used, how easily they can reproduce it/at what cost, how easily they can train and replace the workers. How much they can expect people will pay for the product and how much competition there is. How many benefits workers expect for producing these items/which often is dependent on the country’s laws where the workers live, and how easily/cheaply the raw goods can be shipped to them.

It leaves one wondering if craftsmanship is still critical in the market. Do they still want bespoke items? Or is mass production key in the free market? While it’s true that mass production is good for trade/convenience, it’s not good for tourism, which is the other big source of revenue in the world economy. But it seems like that has lost it’s hold in the minds of the world leaders.

For eg: How many countries have a McDonalds in their inner city? Or how many don’t? Do they serve Turkish, Columbian or Arabic coffee styles with their burgers? Do they have green or black tea? Do they change the sides and fixings? Do they have Kosher, Halal or vegan options? Do they serve the community they land in or global travellers?

It often seems like the workers that are treated well are ones who cannot be easily replaced. The rest are dropped off in vans from the nearest slum and chained to the assembly line. What do the groups of workers now do for the growth and safety of their workers, protections and services of their labour force? Do they still have mutual aid and benefit packages? Or is it more like a coral of grunts, easily replaceable. Therefore no real reason to invest in them.

…..

And if a labour group actually has enough members to represent, they might form a political party. Such as the New Democrats in Canada. If they remain small, they are more likely to care about their workers. But as they grow, they become a corporation in their own right. Then they side with management more than the traditional values of the group. Though maybe we should be grateful they aren’t mobsters? Or are they? They seem more likely to reach for a Tommy gun than a worker’s aid form these days. And heaven help those who can’t work anymore. Check the garbage heap for them.

Maybe we need to go back to the cottage industry, so we can have variety and workers will seem less disposable. And at least families will see each other over the work and meal tables.

Because the laws and ‘common sense’ have shown they aren’t enough anymore.

….

Guilds – artisans gathering to determine the quality of their work and degree of workers – master, journeyman, apprenticeship

….

Unions – textile and engineering workers. Still quality

…..

Colonies – artists living together to share materials and resources

……

Coops – insurance, materials, loans, market stalls, community kitchens and gardens

The International and Inter-generational Harm of Colonialism and Christianity – Finding More Children’s Bodies – To Date the Third Graveyard. (Pt 2)

(Comments on this post will be closed. I don’t want or chose to invite the racism that I’ve seen on Twitter onto this piece. This is a very sensitive issue.)

Since the graveyard in Kamloops was found, Twitter has been a buzz with how Canada as a nation can deal with and show respect. recognition for this horrible issue.
On finding the Kamloops’ site, there was a call for the Ottawa parliament to lower it’s flags.

Now there is a call for the cancellation of Canada Day – July 1 this year. Or at least acknowledging the graves and mourning the little lives lost. It’s not yet known what Heritage Canada will do. But it’s early.

Both of these things seem really performative vs actual acts. But maybe it’s signal that the calls are being heard? That on behalf of their city, municipality, even the country, the voices are being heard of the First Nation tribes and of those little souls that were taken too soon?

• What can be done though? Other than returning the bodies to their tribes and hopefully their families. So they can mourn and perform whatever rites would be most fitting.
• What can Canada ( the United States, and other countries with these schools) do to make amends? Is there anything that will bring justice?
• Some are calling for churches (esp those involved) losing their tax exempt status. Under the Constitution of Canada, a church that wants this designation must show they are working for the betterment of their community. Killing children or allowing them to die when they’re in your charge isn’t exactly showing that, is it? So far, the bodies have been found on Catholic school grounds. Will the call change when it’s another church?

It’s a horror and I’m not sure there is a right answer. Not as the enormity sinks in, even among outsiders to the tribes and parents who have lost their babies. I cannot imagine being that parent. It breaks my heart to think of it. The thought of the govt/police/Children’s Aid seizing my child and refusing me access, denying them their heritage. And the child I adored dying away from me, finding out years later what happened to my baby. No, I don’t think there is an answer.

As we sit and ponder these deaths, let’s try to listen to the voices of tribal members as they ask for what they need from us. Let’s hear their stories and their grief. It’s time to recognize what has been done, in Canada and other nations, in the name of nation-building. Because no matter what symbolic gesture we make, it’s performative without their asking it of us.

If you want to find out more, there are resources below:

……

2018 – 50 Indigenous children’s bodies found who died at the Brandon Residential School. Manitoba

…….

2021 – former Kamloops British Columbia, ‘Indian’ Residential School have uncovered the remains of 215 children buried at the site

• my previous writing on the history

…….

2021 – Cowessess First Nation announced today the discovery of 751 unmarked graves near former residential school in Saskatchewan

……

PMJT calling out the RC Church for records and apology
$27M will soon be available to communities to help locate children who died at residential schools: feds

……

2015 – The Truth and Reconciliation Commission accepted by PMJT
govt’s response to calls to action since 2015

……

Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
Supplementary report
govt proposal

For Love of Craft, For Love of Self, or For Love of Money?

People talk about tradition, economy and institutions like they are written in blood, a deal with the devil. Or written in concrete. Unable to be changed, shy of war or bomb blast.

People talk about a free market, like it’s something that must be done. Items must be made, people must be employed, fads must be kept up, and we all must keep up with the Jones’. Convenience more critical than excellence. While the oceans fill with plastic and chemicals. While children starve to death every day.

Yes those things are somewhat important, but you’d think we’d review when garbage heaps turn into villages of people scavenging for a few coin so they can eat today.

And yes they’re important, until we realize that the system we value so highly is turning out more bigots and predators than giving people an income they can subsist on. And it costs more to respond with police to what goes on than it does to provide for people’s needs in the first place. Compassion comes at a premium.

And as the next few decades roll by, and the world gets hotter, as food and clean water get scarcer, as more pandemics roll over us, will we change our minds?

Or is the same old thing worth humanity being the last mass extinction? Would we literally rather die than change?

It’s human nature, you say.

It’s the way it’s always been done.

We think we’ve grown, evolved

But since the beginning of time the same model corals us and our every shape, law and system.

It’s there in our lives and interactions with each other. It’s there in the buildings and in our so-called innovations. War and peace. Work and leisure.

We are ants. We are primates. Will we always be?

Looking at the Paths of the Black, Indigenous (First Nations), Latin and Asian Peoples in the Americas and Critical Race Theory

Alberta’s Premier Jason Kenney is a Trump fan and follows his view on sanitizing the education system of anything but Western European info.
Trump – 1776 project
Kenney – junk theories

The problem with that is that not all people in Alberta are white Europeans.

And coming from a situation where First Nations people have repeatedly faced tactics used to assimilate them and many still live on reservations, this is saying that their heritage and history don’t exist or don’t matter. Metis map

This is telling children that they have equal access to the dream of gold streets in North America. And that is a hard sell to someone who goes home to dirty water, food insecurity, unsafe housing with ltd indoor plumbing and electricity, and the police and child protective services at the door to take their kids.

• To people who have been slaves in their own country, whose only way out is to enlist in the military machine &/or give up their kids to white society. Who cannot leave the reserve or they lose their status and rights to any reparation for the tribe.

Who have already suffered irreparable harm. Being forced to be so poor on land that was theirs.

• Or black people who came from slavery and segregation laws.
• Or latin people who are ltd to being farm migrant, seasonal workers.
• Or Chinese people who were grunt workers on the railroad and ltd to specific small businesses if they wanted to stay.
  Canada and the USA have a similar history in that.

That is the problem in teaching all children that they have equal rights and opportunity under the laws. It denies who they are. Because they do not have that, at all. Not even all white west European kids have equal access to the gold streets of the dream. Esp under conservative govt leadership.

And any politician who tries to say otherwise is forwarding racist structures and oppressing their people who they promised to serve.

That’s without even discussing the difference between how boys and girls are treated at home, in school, and in the streets.

So no, Jason Kenney. Kids do NOT have an equal shot at the dream. Not even in Canada, one of the wealthiest nations on earth.

…… What is Critical Race Theory?

The Five Tenets of CRT There are five major components or tenets of CRT:

• (1) the notion that racism is ordinary and not aberrational; Color-blindness and meritocratic rhetoric serve two primary functions: first, they allow whites to feel consciously irresponsible for the hardships people of color face and encounter daily and, secondly, they also maintain whites’ power and strongholds within society.
• (2) the idea of an interest convergence; Stated more precisely, interest convergence is the notion that whites will allow and support racial justice/progress to the extent that there is something positive in it for them, or a “convergence” between the interests of whites and non-whites. CRT focuses on informing the public how certain stories act and serve to silence and distort certain enclaves of people and cultures (typically people of color) while simultaneously building-up and legitimizing others’, typically the majority—status quo (which retains or gains even more power through these transactions).
• (3) the social construction of race; (laws that segregate races ie the ‘one drop’ rule, Jim Crow laws, voting ‘tests’.)
• (4) the idea of storytelling and counter-storytelling; (one story doesn’t counter another equally in an oppressive system)
• and (5) the notion that whites have actually been recipients of civil rights legislation. (have received advantages, funding, better teachers, resources, living areas so it’s easier to succeed)
  read the long version here

……

Critical race theorists recognized that, while the law could be used to deepen racial inequality, it also held potential as a tool for emancipation and for securing racial equality.
Foundational questions that underlie CRT and the law include:

• How does the law construct race?;
• How has the law protected racism and upheld racial hierarchies?;
• How does the law reproduce racial inequality?;
• and How can the law be used to dismantle race, racism, and racial inequality?
  Am Bar

….. some theorists

Derrick Bell
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
Richard Delgado
Jean Stefancic

Juneteenth is Now a US Federal Holiday! – The Spirits of Your Allies Along the Way Celebrate with You!

It may feel like a performative act and like the gubnant and yts are taking it over. But maybe it’s a step in the journey?

The spirits of

• white abolitionists, churches/pastors, farmers, shopkeepers who were helpers on the underground railroad,
• Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America as ports in your storm,
• those who had a similar period of slavery and oppression all cheer with you today!

Many put their skin in this illegal at the time endeavour, risking their lives, homes, families, freedom and getting branded to see you out of bondage.

From the day it began to the day slavery ended, working forward to see the systemic hurdles yet to be struck down, even today.

Writing letters, preaching from our platforms, marching with you, opening our homes and wallets, risking jail, injury and death. Watching the dance of one step forward, two steps back. Loving you. Ready to do it all again.

We are cheering with you!

…. resources

history.com- ur
history.com -ab
time and date.com – juneteenth
history.com – contributors to ur
eiu.edu -ur

Shaman Works 4 – When Miko Dances (a story)

Shaman Works 4 – When Miko Dances

NB – Shamanism is old, new and evolving. It has a very gestalt POV/ethos (mind, body/senses, spirit, community, relationships). And it has been practiced/adapted around the world. It is also creeping into the Western medical model and psychotherapies.

……

The Shaman had been watching the client for some time. And so had her assistant. This time it was the assistant who had more intimate knowledge of what was going on within the client. So she went to the shaman and proposed a plan.

The shaman was happy to advocate for the plan with the client. And with the closer relationship between the assistant and the client, the client agreed.

So the three of them, being in accord, went to the temple. The assistant went inside to change and get the right head space for her other role. That of Miko.

Miko was about to enter a trance and dance so she could commune with the spirits and see where the client’s troubles originated. Had she failed her ceremonial duties to her ancestors? Had she been ‘jumped on’? Had some part of her soul fragmented due to some harm done to her or her family?

The shaman had seen Miko dance before and enjoyed the slow, rhythmic beat of the music that came from the stage. She came here as often as she could to watch this ceremony.

The client was enthralled and sat quietly watching this new experience. Seeing for the first time that the young woman she had trusted as an assistant was in her own right a practitioner as well.

~the end~

…..

(actual Miko dances)

….. research

escholarship
folklore
patternz
uwstout.edu
stanford

Shaman Works 3 – The Loss Profile (a story)

Shaman Works 3 – The Loss Profile

The sessions and assessments were going really well so far. And most positive sign yet was how cooperative the client was with both her and her assistant.

Today, the focus was on what the client had previously been and been able to do, how accepting they were of the change in their life, what their dreams had been and what they would be revised to.

Many people mourn the person they used to be if there was an illness, abuse or injury that forced this change in what they were able to do now and how independent they now were. It can be as severe as having a death occur to those who are anxiety or grief prone.

It took some time to walk this process with them and see how realistic their future hopes were. At times they had to create a whole new person and future.

The shaman usually took a few sessions on this and only if the client had been cooperating. So she was excited when she could get to this part of the journey.

The questions were a LOT easier than the thought process could ever be:

• What sports and hobbies did you used to engage in?
• Can you still participate in them? (viewer, coach, socialization with other fans of the sport or hobby)
• Can they be adapted to suit your new ‘normal’?
• How fit were you?
• Do people you used to engage with still treat you the same?
• Do they still seek you out?

That kind of thinking. For every no from the past, they had to figure out if there was a viable way to engage with a love that was safe(r) for their present and future self.

And the shaman had to buffer the client with discussions of what they could do instead when the loss was profound and unlikely to be recovered at any meaningful level.
Some of that could be done by exploring similar sports or hobbies that were more adaptable.

But sometimes the client had to build themselves a memory book and enjoy that for something that once was. Like never being a child again, but you could still enjoy what you remember of your youth and be youthful in spirit. Still hold a love for what you had, even if you could never do it again.

The good news was they were going into this phase with trust building between them. That was always a good sign!

Because the next phase would be to bring the people in who would support them thru this process when they applied it to their life, rather than just as a discussion.

This was actually harder in many cases than working with the client. Because the number one rule of dynamics is that the groups always fights change. They like the person they used to control, they rarely want them to heal completely or adapt completely, Because even though they blame them for needing extra time and energy, that need gives them purpose.

The group doesn’t like independence. And without independence, the person is left infantilized.

And whether that suited the group or not, it wasn’t healthy for the dynamic or any of the individuals involved.