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Trevor Noah implores U.S. journalists to ask themselves this one vital question

"Ask yourself that question every day, because you have one of the most important roles in the world."

@birbigs/Twitter

Trevor Noah received high praise for his closing remarks at the 2022 White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Back in 2022, for the first time in six years, the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner (WHCD) was held with the president of the United States in attendance in Washington, D.C. The WHCD has been a tradition in Washington for more than a century and for the past several decades it has taken the form of a comedic roast of both the government and the press. The dinner on April 30, 2022 was hosted by comedian and former host of "The Daily Show" Trevor Noah, who's known for his smart, witty commentary on social and political issues.

The "let's invite a comedian to publicly and viciously make fun of us for a couple of hours" idea may be a bit odd, but these events have proven quite popular over the years, with many viral moments (including President Obama's infamous GIF-worthy mic drop) coming from them. The dinner opened with Noah joking about it being a superspreader event, earning some uncomfortable laughter as the COVID-19 pandemic was still fresh, and then the individual roasts commenced. Noah didn't hold back slamming people across the political and media spectrum—all in good fun, of course—including President Biden himself.

But it was Noah's closing remarks that earned the most attention. In his signature style, Noah managed to bring a serious and thoughtful element to a night of ribbing and laughter when he admonished the press to recognize both their freedom and their responsibility.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com


“If you ever begin to doubt your responsibilities, if you ever begin to doubt how meaningful it is, look no further than what’s happening in Ukraine," Noah told the reporters in the room. "Look at what’s happening there. Journalists are risking and even losing their lives to show the world what is happening. You realize how amazing that is?

“In America, you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth, even if it makes people in power uncomfortable. Even if it makes your viewers or readers uncomfortable. You understand how amazing that is?" he reiterated.

Noah pointed out that he had just stood there and made fun of the president of the United States and he was going to be fine. Then he contrasted that with the reality Russian journalists are living under Vladimir Putin.

“Ask yourself this question," he said to the members of the media. "If Russian journalists who are losing their livelihoods … and their freedom for daring to report on what their own government is doing—If they had the freedom to write any words, to show any stories, or to ask any questions—if they had, basically, what you have—would they be using it in the same way that you do?

"Ask yourself that question every day," he said, "because you have one of the most important roles in the world."

People had high praise for Noah's entire evening of hosting, but especially for his closing remarks. Russia's war on Ukraine has put a spotlight on many things we tend to take for granted, including the freedom of the press.

Journalists play a vital role in society and it's one they must take seriously. To be fair, most journalists do feel the weight of their responsibility, but the corporatization of news media and a 24/7 news cycle has created a competitive landscape in which coverage is sometimes determined by what will drive traffic or viewers rather than on what's truly newsworthy or important. The demonization of news outlets by some has also created a hostile media environment, and news organizations have to resist the urge to kowtow to the loudest voices or inadvertently amplify the wrong things. Journalists often have to fight for the truth on multiple fronts, sometimes inside their own newsrooms.

As we see attacks on the media ramping up, both legitimate criticisms and blatant violations of the first amendment, the responsibility shouldered by journalists is weightier than ever. Speaking truth to and about power may not always be popular, and being careful to get the facts straight may not result in as many clicks as sensational or conspiratorial headlines do, but when you cut through the noise of social media and the political melee, what will endure—hopefully—is the real reporting of what's actually happening. In addition to the public need to be intelligently and accurately informed, future generations will depend on the historical record that real reporters and journalists help provide.

Thank you, Trevor Noah, for reminding reporters that the fight is worth it and for using this opportunity to remind the press of its primary purpose with such a simple yet profound question.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Family

Debunked: Negative parenting images have zero impact on people's desire to have kids

People quip about misbehaving kids being "birth control," but that's not what the research shows.

Photo by Snapwire

"Baby fever" is hard to beat.

The desire to become a parent is at once an incredibly simple biological impulse and a complex psychological decision. As mammals, we have an innate evolutionary drive to reproduce and pass on our genes. As humans, we may feel compelled to nurture a child, to grow a family, to leave a lineage and legacy behind…or we may not.

Some people don't feel the desire to have children, but research shows most young adults do. The phenomenon known as "baby fever" is real, and it happens to both women and men. For women, the desire for a baby tends to start off strong and decrease with age and after having children, whereas for men baby fever tends to increase as they get older.

But how does popular culture impact that desire? Do parenting depictions in media and advertisements have an influence one way or another?

Those are the questions researchers from the UBC Sauder School of Business explored in a 2022 study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.

“Advertising and social media play an important role in how we view the world. In general, what we see on Instagram and Facebook are positive portrayals of parenthood, with #blessed and #bestkidsever. How often do we see parents post #mykidsareterrible?” asked study co-author Dr. Lisa Cavanaugh. “We wanted to see if, by simply showing pictures of kids in advertising, we could affect the desire to have children.”

The study authors observed 1,093 childless young adults between the ages of 18-35 as they viewed positive and negative parent-child advertisements and ads with the children removed (neutral images). Positive images showed things like a parent and child smiling while interacting or doing something fun and creative together, while negative images showed children having meltdowns or parents clearly exasperated with a child's misbehavior.

What they found was that positive parenting images increased the participants' desire to have a child by 22 percent compared to the neutral images. However, there was no inverse effect with the negative parent-child images.

In fact, there was no negative effect at all. Seeing parenting being portrayed negatively did not change participants' minds about wanting to have a child.

“These are people who don’t yet have children, so it could be they see the comedy in kids behaving badly. When it’s not you trying to clean up the mess or get a child to eat before you go to work, it can be humorous,” Dr. Cavanaugh posited. “But we can say with certainty that people without children who saw these negative parent-child moments were not dissuaded.”

One thing the authors found in measuring how negative parenting images impacted "baby fever" was that both positive and negative parenting images evoked a sense of empathy in participants, which correlated with a greater desire to have children. Even the negative parenting images tended to create an empathic response (though not as significantly as the positive parenting images did) leading to a slight increase in desire to have a child.

"Further bolstering the importance of empathic emotions in understanding the desire to have children, our results indicated that the depiction of negative parent–child moments also increases the desire to have children via empathic emotions," the authors wrote. "This finding suggests that the valence of parent–child images (i.e., that they are positive and sweet) may be less critical to the increased desire to have children. Instead, empathic emotions seem to be critical in predicting the desire to have children."

So perhaps the quips we see on social media posts of misbehaving children or stressed out parents about them being "birth control" really are just jokes. According to this study, "baby fever" isn't so easily brought down.


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60 models. 12 sizes. One photo project to change how we view the human body.

What's size got to do with it?


Categories are great for some things: biology, herbs, and spices, for example.

Image via

But bodies? Well, putting bodies into categories just gets weird. There are around 300 million people in America, but only 12 or so standard sizes for clothing: extra-extra-small through 5x.


That's why designer Mallorie Dunn is onto something with her belief — people have different bodies and sizing isn't catching up.

Dunn has found that the majority of clothing sizes stop at an extra-large, yet the majority of women in America are over that. "And that just doesn't make sense," she says.

All images via Smart Glamor, used with permission.

Human spice rack, only, a LOT more variations of flava. ;)


That's why she started a project around her clothing label, Smart Glamour, to document the bodies of models according to their sizes — and to show how one size can look very different on different bodies.

In pursuit of creating a fashion environment that's kinder to all bodies, Dunn has dedicated herself to educating consumers about sizing.

First, she found 60 people of 12 different sizes and took their pictures.

Then, she put five women at a time in the same size of skirt and shirt to show how diversely beautiful human bodies are and to prove that everyone looks different in clothes no matter what size they have on.

She hoped to show people that 12 sizes don't even come close to capturing the beauty of the human form.

All these models are wearing the same size ... but do they look the same?

"No matter what size you are that's not what dictates your worth or your beauty."

"I had a convo with a friend of mine who was like 'Yeah, if I went from a medium to a large, I'd be fine with it, but if I went from a large to an extra-large, that wouldn't be OK' and I was like, 'Why???' And she had no rational reason behind that," Dunn said, describing a conversation we've all either had, started, or heard. "We've been taught forever that the bigger something sounds, the worse that it is."

Dunn's project also shows just how arbitrary and narrow-minded clothing sizes are.

Sizes really are just numbers.

Unlike the images we are presented both in clothing ads and in entertainment and media, human beings aren't, as Dunn remarked, "robots who come out on a conveyor belt ... we're all shaped differently."

The pressure to look one way is obnoxious. And kinda dangerous.

"We've been taught forever that the bigger something sounds, the worse that it is."

There's so much weight — no pun intended — on being the "right" size.

"You put an 'extra' on top of a 'large,' and suddenly it's the end of the world," Dunn said of her experience in fashion sizing. "... And it really doesn't mean anything, it really only means that there's an extra inch of fabric."

One extra inch of fabric.

3 in 4 girls report feeling depressed, guilty, or shameful after just three minutes of leafing through a fashion mag.

But I'd like to imagine a world where everyone can try on clothes and leave the emotional burden of worrying about fit to the clothes.

Instead, let's focus on what looks good on our bodies. Let the clothes handle the emotional roller coaster of not fitting, and you just live your life in the body you've been given.

Dunn, who has worked for fashion houses for her whole career, puts it bluntly: "Clothes are not made for all bodies. ... We shouldn't then think when something doesn't fit us that it's somehow our fault."

Dunn's models also have a group on Facebook where they support each other, compliment each other, and generally lift each other up. Model Stephanie describes it this way: "We see the beauty in one another and help each other to recognize our own beauty at the same time." Fashion leading to body optimism and confidence? Yes, please.

And Dunn herself drives a hard line when it comes to feeling good in the skin you've been given. Her philosophy is this: No matter what size you are, that's not what dictates your worth or your beauty.

Self-worth not based on appearances. That's a category we can all aspire to "fit" into!


This article originally appeared on 07.27.16

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Pop Culture

Would we feel differently about our bodies if we didn't watch TV? Science seems to think so.

Researchers set out to study this question — and walked away with some really fascinating new data.

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Television has a way of tuning off... healthy images.

Do we all, instinctively, find the same types of bodies attractive? Or do TV, movies, and pictures in magazines subtly influence what sorts of bodies we're attracted to?

Researchers at Newcastle University in the U.K. set out to study this question — and walked away with some really fascinating new data.

The question they posed: Do people who have limited access to TV have different beauty ideals than those who watch more frequently?

It's hardly a secret that Hollywood prefers thin. A 2003 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that female characters who have bigger bodies were few and far between on TV at the turn of the last decade. When they did appear, they were less likely to have romantic partners and "less likely to considered attractive."

Things have improved in recent years but only slightly. And popular reality shows like, "The Biggest Loser" continue to sell the idea that weight loss is the ticket to feeling attractive.

It raises the question: Would we feel differently about our bodies if we didn't watch so much TV? Or if we saw more positive portrayals of people with bigger bodies on the air?

It's really hard to study this because there aren't a lot of places left in the world that don't have access to Western media.

entertainment, studies, American media, global affects

Even most dogs have access to American TV these days.

Image via Pixabay.

In order to get good data, you need to talk to people who not only rarely or never watch TV and movies, but who are hardly even exposed to them and the culture they help generate.

American TV and movies — and locally-produced TV and movies that draw inspiration from our TV and movies — are pretty much everywhere by now.

But there are some. And that's where the researchers went.

Country, TV access, body image, women

A map representing Nicaragua in South America.

Image by DaDez/Wikimedia Commons.

Specifically, they went to the east coast of Nicaragua, which is home to a number of remote villages, some of which have no or only partially electricity.

Researchers found a remote village with little TV access and asked participants there to react to various images of women's bodies of different sizes.

pageants, military, culture, BMI

A female Kansas National Guardsman competed in the 2014 Miss America Pageant.

Photo by Staff Sgt. Jessica Barett/Kansas Adjutant General's Department Public Affairs Office.

The subjects were asked to rate each image on a scale of 1 to 5. Their responses were compared with those from an urban area and a similar village that had greater access to broadcast media.

Critically, the two villages chosen were very similar culturally — previous studies have had difficulty separating out media viewing habits from other cultural variables that might account for the difference in how the images were perceived. Standards of beauty vary from culture to culture, including certain cultures that prize fatness (much like the "thin ideal" in the West, this is often similarly harmful to women and girls).

The result? Participants in the village with the least media access preferred bodies with a higher body mass index on average than those in the urban area and more connected village.

There are caveats, of course.

Using BMI to measure normal versus abnormal weight has become increasingly controversial recently. It's also impossible to draw big, sweeping conclusions from a single study.

But it's real data. And it does suggest that perhaps we're not hardwired to find smaller bodies attractive.

scientific data, psychology, university studies, media

Science!

Photo by Amitchell125/Wikimedia Commons.

"Our data strongly suggests that access to televisual media is itself a risk factor for holding thin body ideals, at least for female body shape, in a population who are only just gaining access to television," said Dr. Lynda Boothroyd, senior lecturer in psychology at Durham University and co-leader of the study.

In other words, the more TV we watch, the more we're likely to be attracted to lower-weight bodies. The less TV we watch, the more we're likely to look favorably upon higher-weight bodies.

Most importantly, it's evidence that there's nothing inherently attractive about weighing less, and nothing inherently unattractive about weighing more.

It's just something we made up.

theme parks, globalization, studios, China

A sunny day captured at Hong Kong Disneyland.

Photo (cropped) by PoonKaMing/Wikimedia Commons.

 But the good news is that we can un-make it up.How do we do that? Here's one idea: Let's get more people with more bodies of more shapes and sizes we can get on TV, in movies, and in glossy magazines — giving them real lives, real flaws, real romances, and presenting them, at least every so often, as attractive. Like, you know. Real people.This article originally appeared on 02.26.16

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