Adwoa Aboah Named Global Brand Activist for Rimmel London Beauty Brand

Adwoa Aboah Named Global Brand Activist for Tmmel London Beauty Brand AOC Eye

British cosmetics brand Rimmel, now owned by Coty, Inc., has tapped Adwoa Aboah as the beauty brand’s new global activist.

Adwoa and Rimmel London are “like-minded in advocating self-expression and believe in the freeing power of makeup, not to transform but to empower all wearers,” said the brand in a PR release.

The founder of Gurl Talk joins a long list of unique, trailblazing women who have previously been the face of Rimmel London. They include Kate Moss, Georgia May Jagger, Cara Delevingne and Rita Ora.

AOC thought of Aboah today, remembering her British Vogue September 2020 cover, shared with Britain’s Manchester United football star Marcus Rashford, one of three players of color who received savagely racist abuse after losing the Euro 2020 final to Italy on Sunday.

You may remember Sir Richard Branson talking about watching the game, after his return from the edge of space on Sunday.

AOC will revisit this story Wednesday, as British Vogue has resurrected their cover and shared many helpful links on racism for readers.

Adut Akech Electrifies in Fall 2021 Modern Luxury by Chris Colls ELLE US August

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Adut Akech Electrifies in Fall 2021 Modern Luxury by Chris Colls ELLE US August

Supermodel Adut Akech is breathtaking, posting in vibrant, modern luxury clothes for the August 2021 issue of ELLE US. Photographer Chris Colls [IG] captures Adut, who just became a global ambassador for Estee Lauder, with styling by Alex White.

In her interview Adut Akech Is Electric Roxanne Fequiere refreshes memories about Adut’s journey out of South Sudan. We’ve told that story many times on AOC in the last four years, so head-on over to ELLE to read Adut’s story of roadside birth on on Christmas Day in 1999 — somewhere between South Sudan and the Kenyan refugee camp Kakuma.

The camp Kakuma, that has birthed several successful models, was her home, until Adelaide, Australia welcomed her, her mom and five siblings. Adut’s father died in the fighting in South Sudan, and her aunt was already living in Adelaide.

In Adut’s own words:

“I was born on the way to Kenya, and I haven’t been to Sudan since.

Adut’s fashion industry success is legendary by now. At a time when models of color are rising everywhere in fashion, Adut is a superstar. Her Estee Lauder appointment makes her platinum grade in the world of modeling and will absolutely affect her bank account, Adut is also a member of the new VS Collective, joining other high-credentialed women to do what, none of us knows. They are advisers.

In another of Adut’s famous stories touched in her ELLE interview, in the car ride from the Adelaide airport to her new home, the now supermodel turned to her mother and made a vow: “Now that we’re here, I’m going to get an education. I’m going to buy you a car and a house. I’m going to make something of myself.”

That life checklist is complete for Adut Akech, who tells us something more about her character when she says: “I will always be a refugee.”

To say that there’s whole lotta love for this young woman is an understatement. Hey, Adut, how about a ride in Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two Unity 22? Now THAT would be memorable for a refugee model. You could raise money for your future project in [South] Sudan. ~ Anne

Read the interview and get info on all the incredible clothes at ELLE.

The Odds Were Greater That Richard Branson Would Die Today Than Voter Fraud in Texas

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Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Unity 22 didn’t deliver peace on earth today, but Sir Richard Branson and his crew created hope for humankind. Thankfully, the flight had nothing to do with the state of Texas, because Texas has gone totally retrograde.

New Mexico Gov. Grisham Celebrates Space Travel While Texas Gov Abbott Goes Retrograde

Texas Republican governor Greg Abbott and his insurrectionist-supporting right-wingers were busy rolling back the rights of people to vote in Texas — people of color, in particular — this weekend. Across the western Texas border, New Mexico’s Democratic governor Michelle Lujan Grisham looked into the future of space travel.

Minutes before the launch, Gov. Grisham said the international attention on Sunday’s flight would help cement New Mexico’s place in the history of space exploration. Virgin Galactic flew out of a new spaceport constructed with New Mexico taxpayer dollars — a fact celebrated by the governor, who is anything but Texas retrograde.

“We’re not just competing; by God, New Mexico is leading,” the governor beamed in a scrum with reporters, as quoted in the Austin American-Statesman.

The enormous success and publicity of today’s Virgin Galactic’s Unity flight will give New Mexico a more prominent position for drawing aerospace companies and other businesses in the future.

Why Should We Care About Space Flight When American Democracy Is Under a Full-Frontal Assault by the Greg Abbott Crowd?

It's easy to say "why do we even care about Branson’s flight,when Texas is trying to disenfranchise voters of color, when Texas citizens, who lined up at 6am in Austin Saturday waited 16 hrs. for testimony to even begin Saturday night."

We care about Branson's flight because many of us are hopeful adventurers. Rather than watch fellow humans who are red state Republicans still clamoring for Donald Trump to be reinstalled as their king of America, the optimists among us look for answers in the unknown.

If Branson can blast off and live to tell the story -- why the hell cant' we figure out democracy in America.

By their own admission in Texas, there are only 44 people under investigation for voter fraud out of the 11 million who voted in the 2020 election.

The odds that Branson and his team would have died today were far greater than the possibility that voter fraud has any significance on election results in Texas.

If we only live mentally with the Texas vision of possibility in America, we are doomed. This is why AOC says that Texas thinks and acts retrograde -- and yes, the results are devastating for our democracy.

From pumping out fossil fuels and rolling back every environmental regulation in effect under the Obama administration to curtailing voting rates when TEXAS ALREADY RANKS among the lowest states in voter turnout, Texas is totally retrograde.

Even though more voters cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election than in 30 years, Texas still ranked 44 out of 50 states in America.

Richard Branson and Ubuntu

And in the case of Branson, we hope he's not another adventurer who just plunders this sacred new horizon -- which is one that has existed for countless millions of years.

Richard Branson, the founder and CEO of the Virgin Group, makes a powerful argument in his writings for using business to make a positive impact in the world and shifting our values from an exclusive focus on profit to also caring for people, communities and the planet. Ubuntu is doing what you would do for yourself to others as well, and injects a level of much-needed accountability in business.

The Virgin website spoke to the practice of ubuntu in business in 2015.

For me, people like Branson help me to believe there is a way out of the current human condition. Breakthroughs are possible in the future world of Richard Branson and the vision of New Mexico governor Grisham. There is only Trump-style, Texas swagger in the vision of Gov. Greg Abbott.

You can be Texas proud, and still understand why Texas is retrograde. Swagger and brains are usually inversely related. The more you have of one, the less of the other. Texas drowns in swagger — and even Texas white men will proudly confirm that fact.

Don't be like Texas, when in the universe, we can have "ubuntu for all" in the words of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.

Sir Richard Branson is an exception to my swagger vs brains comparison. Honestly, he’s got bigger ba**s than most of the men in Texas — except for Jeff Bezos. If Branson decided to sell Texas style snake oil, he could. Luckily for the planet, Branson has always had vision.

The founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, who will himself jettison into space in nine days ,was born in Albuquerque but grew up in Houston and later Miami. Blue Origin operates out of west Texas — and yes, Bezos has brains. Big brains and big ba**s, too. But there’s a big difference between Branson and Bezos.

With true Texas swagger, the Blue Origin team has tried aggressively to discredit Virgin’s suborbital space plane. If Richard Branson were an American, he would have voted for Biden, as would Bezos’ ex-wife McKenzie Scott, who is breaking every record in history rewriting the philanthropy guide to giving money away handbook. McKenzie Scott has perfected the art of ubuntu.

As for Jeff Bezos, I find it hard to believe he voted for anyone but Trump. So view his diminution of Branson through that lens. The Blue Origin team — and Bezos himself — only got nice on launch day because we were all groaning over the crassness of Blue Origins Trumpian, no-ubuntu behavior.

I wept uncontrollably today watching the beauty of Unity’s grand space flight. It gave me comfort and hope knowing that the state of Texas is a total threat to the future of American democracy. Branson walks his ubuntu talk daily because — like me — he believes it’s embedded in the universe.

That’s why AOC is betting on Virgin Galactic and New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, when the vision is America’s future. No one has all the answers to improving our mixed up world. But I’d rather live with futurists who honor the ancestral past and Gaia, than a bunch of retrograde white men Texans who honor a made up story about the Alamo.

May the force be with you both Sir Richard and Governor Grisham. ~ Anne

The High-Speed Evolutionary Downsizing of Sicily's Dwarf Elephants

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The High-Speed Evolutionary Downsizing of Sicily's Dwarf Elephants AOC Sustainability

The Amazing Shrinking of Europe’s Colossal Straight-Tusked Elephants

Imagine massive elephants towering 15 feet tall and weighing over 30,000 pounds.. The vision seems straight out of a science-fiction movie, but these super-sized, straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxdon antiquus) were for real, making them among the largest mammals to ever live during the Pleistocene era.

Migrating out of Africa about 800,000 years ago, the giant straight-tusked elephants became widespread across Europe and Asia. Picturing these monumental-sized elephants roaming the British countryside is fantastical enough.

Now imagine that these same super-sized elephants dwindled in size over time — say a few hundred thousands of years or 40 generations and as few as 1500 years— after migrating south to the island of Sicily.

At 15 percent of their original size, the colossal-size elephants became dwarf elephants the size of a donkey. Visualize humans becoming the size of a rhesus macaque monkey, suggests Josh Davis, of Britain’s National History Museum, as a way to understand the focus on new research on Sicily’s dwarf elephants.

The groundbreaking analysis published last month in 'Current Biology', showcases just how rapidly evolutionary changes can occur when animals are isolated on an island.

Anna Murphy's Critical Insights in 'Body Beautiful' for Harper's Bazaar UK

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Anna Murphy's Critical Insights in 'Body Beautiful' for Harper's Bazaar UK AOC Fashion

Models Molly Constable and Seynabou [Zeyna] Cissé cover Harper’s Bazaar UK’s August 2021 ‘The Body Issue’. Shibon Kennedy styles the duo in ‘Body Beautiful’, a visual and written-word reflection on curves lensed by Pamela Hanson [IG] with words by Anna Murphy.

Murphy is fashion director of The Times and The Sunday Times [UK] since 2015. Previously she launched ‘Stella’ at The Sunday Telegraph, also London-based. She is unusually honest in sharing her thoughts about curves and female ‘flesh’ generally-speaking.

All women have paid a high price over body management by religious zealots, but women of color have paid the highest price. In every dialogue of this nature, we must take the experiences of white women and double-triple them for women of color.

Murphy only has a one-pager in Harper’s UK, but hopefully she intends to use her platform to amplify her message going forward on this topic.

Anna Murphy considers the origin of the so-called ‘thin ideal’ that has been in ascendancy over the last century.

In her book ‘Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body’, Susan Bordo argues that it’s about 'the tantalising ideal of a well-managed self in which all is kept in order'. That this has had a greater hold over women than men is because "throughout dominant Western religious and philosophical traditions, the capacity for self-management is decisively coded as male. By contrast, all those bodily spontaneities – hunger, sexuality, the emotions – seen as needful of containment and control have been culturally constructed... as female." Golly.

And so, to follow Bordo’s argument, modern women – or at least those in "late modern Western societies" – have used their bodies to demonstrate to others that they can do, be, live as men do; that they can subjugate their "domestic, reproductive destiny".

I told you the essay is provocative!! ~ Anne

Critical Race Theory Does NOT Focus on Individual Racist Actions of White People

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Explaining Critical Race Theory: What It Is and What It Is Not AOC Blackness

A June-release study from left-leaning Media Matters for America totaled up nearly 1,300 mentions of the term ‘critical race theory’ on Fox News in 4.5 months.

In academia, critical race theorists focus on how America's history of racism and discrimination continues to impact the country today, particularly in how racism may have been brushed aside in previous historical accounts.

Few Americans — including the folks on Fox News — can actually explain critical race theory, but its focus is institutional, systemic racism in government, businesses, and even religion.

Despite being the total boogeyman that Fox News, RT News and other right-wing media say — CRT does not focus at all on the individual actions of white people.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor and central figure in the development of critical race theory, said in a recent interview that critical race theory “just says, let’s pay attention to what has happened in this country, and how what has happened in this country is continuing to create differential outcomes. … Critical Race Theory … is more patriotic than those who are opposed to it because … we believe in the promises of equality. And we know we can’t get there if we can’t confront and talk honestly about inequality.”

Anne of Carversville has a long history of writing about race, religion and political activism. From the moment we saw a YouTube video in President Obama’s 2012 presidential reelection campaign calling him the Devil and featuring the KKK in Colorado, with torches blazing denouncing him as Satan, AOC saw clearly where America is headed.

Media Matters doesn’t have the video either, but their article In 2012, Breitbart tried to use ‘critical race theory’ to take down Obama. It failed miserably’ recaps the situation as AOC remembers it.

Trust Anne of Carversville

The battle is on. I’ve moved to Virginia to be closely involved in the fight for America’s multicultural democracy. AOC’s main focus is first and foremost the facts. The alt-right bullseye in Virginia is Loudoun county outside of Washington, DC and an area that has gone blue in recent years.

It’s hell in Loudoun County.

Children’s school books are being delivered today, so that I can understand precisely what is being taught in schools. AOC will share our learnings with readers, to help them make informed decisions about ‘critical race theory’ in a post-Jan. 6 alt-right, militia movement insurrection to overturn the 2020 presidential election world.

As a young girl in Minnesota, who wept when singing ‘America the Beautiful’, I never though I would see this America in 2021. My own American experiences have taught me that the US is a far more complex country than my first-grade vision

America is in a very, very serious place in our ability to continue on as a democracy. The Trump-voters assault on every political institution is epic, imo, and I’m not wearing rose-colored glasses.

Regular readers of AOC know that I do not hesitate to criticize progressives even though I am one. For this reason, AOC has always enjoyed a solid following and significant personal support for me, among educated, suburban Republican women.

Even Republican conservative women trust AOC’s telling of the facts. We may not agree on certain values-driven topics like Planned Parenthood. But no one has ever accused AOC of making up the facts. We are complimented for being accurate and fair. And we run on no-drama Obama type writing.

AOC hopes to earn that support all over again in the coming months, as America faces its biggest challenge to our imperfect democratic institutions since the Civil War. It’s a painful time in our country, and AOC seeks to be part of the positive solution of protecting our democracy. ~ Anne

Willow Smith's Rock Revival Interview and Valentino Fashion Story in V Magazine

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Willow Smith's Rock Revival Interview and Valentino Fashion Story in V Magazine AOC Fashion Style

American singer, rapper, actor, dancer and songwriter Willow Smith is interviewed by Dania Curvy, digital editor at V Magazine and VMAN about forging the path for Black women in punk rock. Willow is styled by Nicola Formichetti in Valentino’s Roman Palazzo Collection and Cartier’s emblematic hardware.

Photographed by Domen / Van de Velde [IG], the multi-hyphenate creative blasts through the “lazy stereotype that associates Black female singers with R&B and soul”, making it clear that Black women intend to stay strong in a punk rock music genre dominated by white men.

V Magazine is quick to remind us that Smith’s mother Jada Pinkett Smith was the lead singer in a punk rock band Wicked Wisdom. Smith introduced Willow to Tennessee-based metal band Straight Line Stitch, led by a Black woman, Alexis Brown, now Alexis White.

Willow Smith was “super young’ age when ‘Whip My Hair’, her debut single released by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation came out in 2010. "I feel like I lost my sanity at one point," Smith said in 2018 of the time surrounding her song's release. "I had just stopped doing singing lessons and I was kind of just in this gray area of 'Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?' "

In the 2018 interview words of Willow’s father Will Smith: “Willow was really the first person during 'Whip My Hair' that decided she didn’t want to do what I said . . . Because she was the baby girl, she really had the most power over me. As a man – if your daughter says no, there’s really nothing you can do.”

AOC says tell that to authoritarian right-wingers, who fight every day to control women’s bodies through shame and laws. Read Willow Smith’s entire new digital cover interview “Willow’s Rock Revival” at V Magazine.