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Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Lizzo, Body-Shaming, And The Obesity Crisis
I am not a Lizzo (née Mellisa Jefferson) fan. I might recognize one, maybe two, of her songs, upon hearing them. However, Lizzo’s talent and popularity are undeniable, as most recently evidenced by the three Grammy Awards (of eight nominations) she recently received. Lizzo’s success as an unabashedly bold, stereotype-shattering, full-figured woman—in an industry and society that upholds slender women as the standard of beauty—has made her an inspiration to many. It has also made her a subject of concern to many others—perhaps most notably fitness celebrity Jillian Michaels.
I am against body-shaming and any kind of discrimination based on body weight. In fact, I view the national obsession with bodyweight—which is driven more by commerce than by a sincere commitment to positive health outcomes—as a form of oppression. The number on your scale, to the exclusion of everything else about you, is an almost meaningless measure of how healthy or fit you are.
I say “or” because these are two different things. While there is an undeniable correlation between fitness and health, people are often healthy without being particularly fit, and unhealthy even though they are very fit, with great physiques. For example, I know a few bodybuilders with amazing physiques who include smoking a cigarette as part of their post-workout routines. And don’t get me started on the eating disorders that are common in the competitive fitness community.
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. . . . @jemelmcwilliams choreo
Again, my point is bodyweight alone, as a measure of health and fitness, doesn’t mean much. By the way, as a natural bodybuilder, at 5’7” and 175 lbs., I am overweight by traditional standards. This is the case for most bodybuilders and many athletes, depending on the sport.
Which brings me back to Lizzo. Because of my public and vocal stance on health and wellness as a form of measurable wealth—as a business and financial journalist, professional speaker, fitness evangelist, and competitive natural bodybuilder—I have been drawn into several conversations, or directly asked about my thoughts via social media, about Lizzo, fat-shaming, body image, and the obesity crisis. (Yes, I said crisis; especially for black people.)
Based on what I’ve heard from those who have seen her high-energy live performances (I’ve only seen her Saturday Night Live appearance), there is no denying how energetic and fit Lizzo appears to be today, at age 32. However, health is not just about physical ability in our youth, but vitality and longevity over time, as we age. When I think of Lizzo, I think of other celebrities known for being heavier than average:
Heavy D (Dwight Myers) – Lost weight to improve health; died at 44 of a pulmonary embolism, also had heart disease.
Big Pun (Christopher Lee Rios) – Died at 28, of a heart attack and respiratory failure.
Mo’Nique (Monique Angela Hicks) – 52; lost weight to improve health.
Fat Joe (Joe Cartagena) – 49; lost weight to improve health.
Luther Vandross – Lost weight to improve health; died at 54, of a heart attack. Also had an earlier stroke and diabetes.
Vesta Williams – Lost weight to improve health; died at 53, of hypertensive heart disease.
Fred “Rerun” Berry – Died at 52, while in recovery from a stroke.
Jennifer Holliday – 59; lost weight to improve health.
Oprah Winfrey – 65; lost weight to improve health.
Of these people, only Winfrey (who seems healthy and full of vitality even with her full-figure) has celebrated a 60th birthday. God willing, Holliday will enjoy her 60th in October, and Mo’Nique and Fat Joe will thrive beyond that milestone, too.
The deadly dangers of obesity and the toll it takes on the body, and the heart and cardiovascular system, in particular, are real. The destructive effects on a person’s health are undeniable and often irreversible, although additional damage can be prevented by adopting a healthier lifestyle—the sooner the better.
My hope for Lizzo is not that she reaches a bodyweight acceptable to me, Jillian Michaels, or anyone else. My hope is that she lives to be healthy, vital, and productive beyond the age of 60—and let the numbers on the scale fall where they may.
Alfred Edmond Jr. is executive editor-at-large for Black Enterprise and a natural bodybuilder who competes as a member of the National Gym Association, the Drug-Free Athletes Coalition and the Organization of Competition Bodies (OCB). In 2019, he earned an OCB Masters Pro card as a competitor over the age of 40. He also anticipates, “God willing,” celebrating his 60th birthday this year.
This is an opinion piece that may not necessarily reflect the views of BLACK ENTERPRISE.
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Monday, January 27, 2020
WATCH: How LA basketball fans mourned the tragic loss of Kobe Bryant
Shock. Disbelief. Sadness. Those were the feelings most people shared as they tried to process the unthinkable. NBA icon, Kobe Bryant, a hero to many Los Angelenos and fans around the globe, died in a helicopter crash early Sunday morning.
TMZ first broke the news that Kobe, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna Bryant, and seven others had passed away on the same day the Grammys were held, right outside the stadium where Kobe built his basketball kingdom.
READ MORE: BREAKING NEWS: Kobe Bryant dies in helicopter crash
“I was on Instagram and saw a picture with RIP on it and I didn’t believe it but when I got to the Staples Center I realized it was real,” said Rakeem Chatman, a fan.
In the immediate aftermath of the news breaking, the Staples Center wasn’t very packed. Soon afterward thousands of fans wearing Kobe’s number 8 and 24 packed the arena. What was supposed to be a celebration of music’s biggest stars quickly became a memorial for one of the greatest basketball players of all time.
THE HOUSE THAT KOBE BUILT
Outside of the Staples Center was the tale of two cities. People either wore tuxes and dress clothes or Kobe Bryant’s jersey.
“As far as any other event going on in L.A. right now? It’s nonexistent. Everybody’s thoughts are with Kobe, his daughter Gigi and all the other victims,” said Erika Nai, a fan. For comedian, Mr. Commodore, who was attending his first-ever Grammy event, the show was over before it even really began.
Many people in attendance cried tears while others tried to force a smile by telling old Kobe stories. Others played songs that had Kobe references and chants broke out of “KOBE KOBE” and “GIGI GIGI.”
READ MORE: Lebron James reacts to death of Kobe Bryant: “I’m heartbroken and devastated”
One of the most stunning takeaways was the diversity of the crowd. Little children, elders, white, black, it didn’t matter. Many people in attendance were Mexican. Kobe united people on the court, he untied the fans and even in his death, he continues to unite people.
That was the one ray of sunshine in what otherwise was a dark day. Fans cried but vowed to press on because that’s Mamba mentality. No matter what you keep going. Keep pushing. That’s what Kobe would have wanted the fans to do. And they will. But on this day, all we could do was cry in the house that Kobe built.
Tony Anderson is an on-air talent, writer and producer. He can be reached at @tonyandersonTV on Instagram for a good debate.
The post WATCH: How LA basketball fans mourned the tragic loss of Kobe Bryant appeared first on TheGrio.
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LeBron James reacts to the death of Kobe Bryant: “I’m heartbroken and devastated”
Following the unexpected death of Kobe Bryant, 41, and his daughter, Gianna Bryant, 13, along with seven other passengers in a helicopter crash on Sunday, NBA superstar LeBron James has broken his silence about the passing of his friend.
James took to Instagram late Monday evening to release a heartfelt tribute. In the post, James revealed his last phone call with Bryant was only hours before his death on Sunday morning, as he prepared to travel from Philly to LA.
“I’m Not Ready but here I go,” states James. “Man I sitting here trying to write something for this post but every time I try I begin crying again just thinking about you, niece Gigi and the friendship/bond/brotherhood we had!”
“I literally just heard your voice Sunday morning before I left Philly to head back to LA. Didn’t think for one bit in a million years that would be the last conversation we’d have.”
“WTF!! I’m heartbroken and devastated my brother!” James continued.
After paying his respects to Gianna, Kobe Bryant’s wife, Vanessa, and Bryant’s three daughters, James emphasized that he will make sure his friend’s work lives on.
“I promise you I’ll continue your legacy man! You mean so much to us all here especially #LakerNation💜💛.”
Only a day before his death, Bryant went on social media to congratulate LeBron James, who surpassed him on the NBA’s career scoring list.
“Continuing to move the game forward @KingJames. Much respect my brother. #33644,” Bryant tweeted Saturday night.
Continuing to move the game forward @KingJames. Much respect my brother 💪🏾 #33644
— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) January 26, 2020
James expressed similar sentiments of praise on social media after surpassing Bryant, stating that, “He had zero flaws offensively. Zero.”
James and Bryant have long been considered two of the top NBA players for more than twenty years and shared a deep bond throughout that time.
In the wake of the tragedy, the Lakers-Clippers game scheduled for Tuesday has been postponed.
The post LeBron James reacts to the death of Kobe Bryant: “I’m heartbroken and devastated” appeared first on TheGrio.
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Inside the Clive Davis’ Pre-Grammy Gala that brought out Black excellence
It was a night of glamour, musical legends, and unapologetic blackness at The Recording Academy and Clive Davis’ Pre-Grammy Gala on Saturday evening in Los Angles.
The annual bash is known for bringing out the biggest stars in the entertainment industry, but 2020 had special flair as Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs (a.k.a Sean ‘Love’ Combs) received the prestigious Icon Award.
TheGrio was on the red carpet and inside The Beverly Hilton ballroom, and saw stars like Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Chance The Rapper, Usher, Cynthia Erivo, Cardi B and Offset, Naomi Campbell, Trevor Noah, Deborah Cox, Miguel, Billy Porter and even Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Members of the Bad Boy family were there in full effect, with Lil Kim, Faith Evans and husband Stevie J. turning out. Diddy brought all six of his children, making a grand entrance into the Hilton ballroom, flanked by rapper Wiz Khalifa, producer Swizz Beatz, and an entourage of supporters, with faces that showed they were about business– a sign of things to come when Diddy took the stage and gave a passionate speech about diversity at the Grammys.
Another grand entrance came when Janet Jackson entered the ballroom, donning an all-black button up leather dress, surrounded by supporters. Fans and industry insiders alike pulled out their phones to capture her walking by.
Security was tight as Cardi B and Offset entered The Beverly Hilton, where fans had gathered hours beforehand with signs to cheer her on.
“We waited for you Cardi!” one screamed out as the Bronx-born rapper slid by in a hot pink dress with a plunging neckline, causing the rapper to turn and wave.
The wait would be well worth it.
Back inside the ballroom, Icon award-winner Diddy didn’t let the fancy atmosphere stop him from keeping it real on stage during his nearly hour-long speech.
“So I say this with love to the Grammys, because you really need to know this, every year y’all be killing us man,” Diddy said. “Man, I’m talking about the pain. I’m speaking for all these artists here, the producers, the executives…The amount of time it takes to make these records, to pour your heart into it, and you just want an even playing field.”
He then went on to challenge the Grammys to get their “ish” together to support diversity in 365 days, echoing concerns from ousted CEO Deborah Dugan about the award process being influenced by conflicts of interest.
“Truth be told, hip-hop has never been respected by the Grammys,” he continued. “Black music has never been respected by the Grammys to the point that it should be.”
The speech earned plenty of applause, even after a long night. The challenge to push the Grammys to enter a new era of diversity and authenticity was best summed up by Harvey Mason Jr., interim CEO.
“History is created right here in this room,” Mason said. “Looking around, I’m reminded of how much [of] a unifier music is.”
The post Inside the Clive Davis’ Pre-Grammy Gala that brought out Black excellence appeared first on TheGrio.
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Helping military veterans nail that interview
The military is great at teaching soldiers to accomplish objectives under stressful conditions, work as part of a team, and lead groups of people. Those skills are useful in business as well as combat, but many veterans lack experience communicating their skills to recruiters or hiring managers in job interviews.
As a result, many veterans struggle to land a good job after their service — a critical factor for a successful transition into civilian life. Now the startup Candorful is working to change that. The nonprofit facilitates video mock interviews for veterans with volunteer coaches to help them put their best foot forward with employers.
“Veterans rapidly gain experience managing teams and projects, making an impact, working with minimal resources,” says Candorful co-founder and executive director Pat Hubbell SM ’91. When competing with civilians during the interview process, veterans “may be better prepared for a job, but civilians typically know how to talk about their experience and personal impact more effectively,” she adds. “In the military, it’s all about the team, so veterans are not comfortable talking about their individual impact. They often talk about what their team did instead.”
Thinking about their accomplishments at the individual level is just one of the many mental pivots veterans must make as they learn to sell themselves to hiring managers. Candorful aids in that process through live interview simulations and feedback. Veterans accessing the company’s platform choose three coaches from Candorful’s pool of experienced interviewers. They then conduct three one-on-one mock interviews via a video conferencing platform, each lasting about 30 minutes, followed by 15 minutes of verbal feedback. After the session, veterans receive a full report on their performance from each coach.
The company was started in 2017 by Hubbell and co-founder Peter Sukits, who served in the U.S. Army for five years. The founders celebrated their 1,000th training session in November and are planning to dramatically increase the number of veterans coming through their platform this year.
“Our clients can be actively deployed or in a transition program,” Hubbell says, noting Candorful has even helped a soldier serving in a war zone. “They can be anywhere in the world.”
Giving back
As a captain in the Army, Sukits served as a platoon leader and head planning officer for a 400-soldier battalion in Afghanistan. He decided it was time to pursue a civilian career in 2011.
At the time, Hubbell was working as a consultant and advisor at Cornell University, where she was running mock job interviews with students and alumni. That’s where she met Sukits.
Sukits had attended Carnegie Mellon University as an undergraduate prior to commissioning as an Army officer, and Hubbell was impressed with his qualifications and charisma. But she also noticed his discomfort with elaborating on his personal experience.
“Veterans have amazing skills, [such as] leadership skills, and rich experience, but the experience of selling yourself during a job interview doesn’t exist in the military.”
Sukits was accepted into Cornell University’s MBA program and went on to land a great job at Procter and Gamble. But his desire to help others drove him to call Hubbell in 2016 to brainstorm business ideas around offering career services. It didn’t take long for them to focus on conducting mock job interviews for veterans transitioning back to civilian life.
Hubbell had already measured the impact of mock interviews at Cornell. She found that students who participated in the interviews were twice as likely to land their desired job, and they did so sooner than students who hadn’t done the practice interviews.
Although it had been 20 years since Hubbell was a student at MIT, she had kept in touch with fellow alumni and staff members. The founders received support from MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service early on, which Hubbell says gave the business legitimacy and helped them hone their story. Three of Hubbell’s former classmates at the MIT Sloan School of Management began serving on Candorful’s board of directors, and when it came time for the newly formed board to meet, Rod Garcia, the assistant dean of admissions at MIT Sloan, set them up with a conference room on campus.
The startup began as a for-profit venture, but it became clear that securing nonprofit status was essential to gain the trust of partners like Hiring Our Heroes and the Department of Defense’s Transition Assistance Program. Hubbel says being a nonprofit changed the founders’ approach to fundraising, and it took about 18 months to be granted nonprofit status, but the founders didn’t let the wait prevent them from helping veterans.
Easing the transition
In the summer of 2017, relying on volunteers, the founders began coaching a small number of veterans. By 2018, they had partnered with veteran transition assistance programs and had a steady stream of veterans using their service.
Hubbell credits a few large companies for providing assistance early on, including Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Amazon, PWC, Keystone Strategy, East Boston Savings Bank, and Ernst and Young. Some of those companies put Candorful on their internal volunteer opportunities lists, which helped establish a pool of highly qualified coaches. Volunteers come from a variety of fields, the one unifying factor being that they have extensive experience conducting job interviews.
“Our volunteers are people who want to give back to veterans,” Hubbell says. “And it’s easy for them; they’re able to do it from their desk at lunch or dining room table after dinner.”
Following the interview and verbal feedback, each volunteer fills out a scorecard that provides the veterans with grades on everything from their physical appearance to their response structure. Veterans, in turn, rate their coaches.
Of the people who have gone through the Candorful process and left the military, Hubbell says 98 percent had landed their desired job as of the third quarter of 2019.
As the founders work to update their numbers, Hubbell can happily report that Candorful has helped almost 500 veterans prepare for and land jobs, some of whom have even returned to Candorful as volunteer coaches.
“The vast majority of our clients have worked in the military for 10 to 20 years,” Hubbell says. “By the time civilians are reaching the 10-year point of their career, they’ve had experience with interviews, learned, and gotten feedback. The military community doesn’t have the same experience, so we want to close that gap. Not to mention, if they’re eight to 20 years out of high school, they probably have kids. There’s a lot on the line when it’s time to get a good job.”
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Testing the waters
In 2010, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began restoring the Broad Meadows salt marsh in Quincy, Massachusetts. The marsh, which had grown over with invasive reeds and needed to be dredged, abutted the Broad Meadows Middle School, and its three-year transformation fascinated one inquisitive student. “I was always super curious about what sorts of things were going on there,” says Rachel Shen, who was in eighth grade when they finally finished the project. She’d spend hours watching birds in the marsh, and catching minnows by the beach.
In her bedroom at home, she kept an eye on four aquariums furnished with anubias, hornwort, guppy grass, amazon swords, and “too many snails.” Now, living in a dorm as a sophomore at MIT, she’s had to scale back to a single one-gallon tank. But as a Course 7 (Biology) major minoring in environmental and sustainability studies, she gets an even closer look at the natural world, seeing what most of us can’t: the impurities in our water, the matrices of plant cells, and the invisible processes that cycle nutrients in the oceans.
Shen’s love for nature has always been coupled with scientific inquiry. Growing up, she took part in Splash and Spark workshops for grade schoolers, taught by MIT students. “From a young age, I was always that kid catching bugs,” she says. In her junior year of high school, she landed the perfect summer internship through Boston University’s GROW program: studying ant brains at BU’s Traniello lab. Within a colony, ants with different morphological traits perform different jobs as workers, guards, and drones. To see how the brains of these castes might be wired differently, Shen dosed the ants with serotonin and dopamine and looked for differences in the ways the neurotransmitters altered the ants’ social behavior.
This experience in the Traniello lab later connected Shen to her first campus job working for MITx Biology, which develops online courses and educational resources for students with Department of Biology faculty. Darcy Gordon, one of the administrators for GROW and a postdoc at the Traniello Lab, joined MITx Biology as a digital learning fellow just as Shen was beginning her first year. MITx was looking for students to beta-test their biochemistry course, and Gordon encouraged Shen to apply. “I’d never taken a biochem course before, but I had enough background to pick it up,” says Shen, who is always willing to try something new. She went through the entire course, giving feedback on lesson clarity and writing practice problems.
Using what she learned on the job, she’s now the biochem leader on a student project with the It’s On Us Data Sciences club (formerly Project ORCA) to develop a live map of water contamination by rigging autonomous boats with pollution sensors. Environmental restoration has always been important to her, but it was on her trip to the Navajo Nation with her first-year advisory group, Terrascope, that Shen saw the effects of water scarcity and contamination firsthand. She and her peers devised filtration and collection methods to bring to the community, but she found the most valuable part of the project to be “working with the people, and coming up with solutions that incorporated their local culture and local politics.”
Through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), Shen has put her problem-solving skills to work in the lab. Last summer, she interned at Draper and the Velásquez-García Group in MIT’s Microsystems Technologies Laboratories. Through experiments, she observed how plant cells can be coaxed with hormones to reinforce their cell walls with lignin and cellulose, becoming “woody” — insights that can be used in the development of biomaterials.
For her next UROP, she sought out a lab where she could work alongside a larger team, and was drawn to the people in the lab of Sallie “Penny” Chisholm in MIT’s departments of Biology and Civil and Environmental Engineering, who study the marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus. “I really feel like I could learn a lot from them,” Shen says. “They’re great at explaining things.”
Prochlorococcus is one of the most abundant photosynthesizers in the ocean. Cyanobacteria are mixotrophs, which means they get their energy from the sun through photosynthesis, but can also take up nutrients like carbon and nitrogen from their environment. One source of carbon and nitrogen is found in chitin, the insoluble biopolymer that crustaceans and other marine organisms use to build their shells and exoskeletons. Billions of tons of chitin are produced in the oceans every year, and nearly all of it is recycled back into carbon, nitrogen, and minerals by marine bacteria, allowing it to be used again.
Shen is investigating whether Prochlorococcus also recycles chitin, like its close relative Synechococcus that secretes enzymes which can break down the polymer. In the lab’s grow room, she tends to test tubes that glow green with cyanobacteria. She’ll introduce chitin to half of the cultures to see if specific genes in Prochlorococcus are expressed that might be implicated in chitin degradation, and identify those genes with RNA sequencing.
Shen says working with Prochlorococcus is exciting because it’s a case study in which the smallest cellular processes of a species can have huge effects in its ecosystem. Cracking the chitin cycle would have implications for humans, too. Biochemists have been trying to turn chitin into a biodegradable alternative to plastic. “One thing I want to get out of my science education is learning the basic science,” she says, “but it’s really important to me that it has direct applications.”
Something else Shen has realized at MIT is that, whatever she ends up doing with her degree, she wants her research to involve fieldwork that takes her out into nature — maybe even back to the marsh, to restore shorelines and waterways. As she puts it, “something that’s directly relevant to people.” But she’s keeping her options open. “Currently I'm just trying to explore pretty much everything.”
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