âI like it. I love it. Iâll eat some more of itâ¦.BACON!!â
Buzzfeedvideo / Via youtube.com
Can You Bacon It?
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34 Must-Read Books For Cat Lovers
Perfect Christmas gifts. (Admit it, you’re thinking “purrrrrfect Catmas” gifts.)
This Russian Black Humor Satire
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Via amazon.com
This Interior Design Bible
Catification by Jackson Galaxy
Via amazon.com
This Vital Survival Guide
How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You by The Oatmeal and Matthew Inman
Via amazon.com
This B. Kliban Classic
Via amazon.com
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Your Relationship With Pizza As Told Through Celine Dion Lyrics
Pizza is bae.
Click play and scroll down!
"For all those times you stood by me"
"For all the truth that you made me see"
"For all the joy you brought to my life"
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Weird Things Couples Do Before Sex
Let’s get it on - but after you brush your teeth.
Buzzfeedyellow / Via youtube.com
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After Losing A Fantasy Football Bet, This Dude Did A Perfect Re-Creation Of Sia's "Chandelier"
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This Raccoon Is All Of Us On A Diet
Behind the GIF: the untold struggle of raccoon eating popcorn!
Will Varner/Buzzfeed
Will Varner/Buzzfeed
Will Varner/Buzzfeed
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This Is What "One Size Fits All" Actually Looks Like On All Body Types
All women’s bodies weren’t created equal.
“One size fits all” stores are popping up everywhere. Brandy Melville, for example, is a retailer that caters to teens and young women, selling clothes in a single size only.
This is the sign you see when walking into a Brandy Melville store. If you purchase clothes through its website, the size option is listed as "fits size small/medium."
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A Group Of Shirtless Guys Remade Beyoncé's "7/11" While Stuck In A Snow Storm
“No kale was harmed in the filming of this video.”
Matthew Barela told BuzzFeed that after driving upstate for Thanksgiving, he and his friends (and Sophie the dog) got snowed in at their place, so they thought, Duh, Beyoncé. They're calling themselves Boyoncé, and their video rivals the original.
matthiasab / Via youtube.com
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Bet You Didn't Know You Could Make A Phone Case Out Of A Balloon
Who knew?!
Guys, this might be the cheapest phone case out there.
Via youtube.com
All you have to do is shrink the balloon down around the phone and voilà!
Via youtube.com
Get one in every color!
Via youtube.com
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31 Amazing Gifts To Make Everyone On Your List A Little Cozier
Pretty much just like sending a hug.
For the travel aficionado.
Log Head Rest, $22, kikkerland.com
Perfect for cozying up in tiny airplane seats.
For the book-lover whose Kindle is a little drab.
Kindle Cover, $40, Etsy
For the sipper.
Beverage Warmer, $19.99, Brookstone
For the ninja turtle.
Pepperoni Pizza Bedding, $80, Ebow Store
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Watch 100 Years Of Makeup In Less Than A Minute
Can you even believe what women did for beauty in the ’20s? Seems like work.
In one minute, this model goes through 100 years' worth of hair and makeup trends.
She completely transforms into the most popular look from each decade from 1910 to 2010.
Here's what women were doing in the '20s.
That lipstick precision deserves a gold medal.
The 1940s were all about the Victory Roll.
Mainly, it's counted as a victory if you can get that to stay in place all day.
youtube.com / Via youtube.com
The '60s were such a tease.
Don't forget the blue eyeshadow.
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On Being A Journalist And A Sexual Assault Survivor
Watching the disintegration of Rolling Stone ‘s story has been a brutal reminder of the enormous chasm of understanding that too often stands between journalists and survivors.
Getty Images/iStockphoto badahos
Despair sank in as I scrolled obsessively through my Twitter feed yesterday afternoon. It seemed like everyone I followed — activists, Baltimore residents, and journalists alike — were obsessively watching the public flogging of Rolling Stone's blockbuster piece "A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA." The piece had been an enormous hit when it was published three weeks ago, but yesterday it seemed to be falling apart.
First there was the Washington Post's brutal hit piece, calling the details of the alleged perpetrator's identity into question. Then Rolling Stone's Managing Editor Will Dana published a note "to our readers," saying that "there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced." And then, on Twitter, journalists were declaring Jackie's story entirely false and making glib remarks — while activists defended Jackie and anguished over the fact that Rolling Stone's reporting could now potentially set back the work to fight sexual assault on college campuses.
Even when I walked away from my desk to talk to my (almost exclusively male) co-workers in my newspaper office, other staffers were talking about how unbelievable Jackie's story was. One staffer hinted that perhaps another rape story our paper had covered was a false report. I walked away from him and back to my desk where I sat for hours with my hands shaking — from rage, from the awful weight of acknowledging how much journalism was failing sexual assault survivors, was failing me.
Being a sexual assault survivor and being a journalist are inextricably intertwined for me. When I escaped from an abusive relationship in college, my school newspaper became my saving grace, the one thing that I could cling to as I struggled to process the fact that someone I loved so much had stripped me of my sense of self-worth, my dignity, my safety. I never reported my abuser to the university, even though he was also a student there — my abuse did not leave the physical evidence that seems to be required for any hope of justice — and so, feeling unable to tell my own story, I focused my efforts into telling the stories of others. I wrote long news stories about sexual assault on my college campus, using reporting as a way to assure myself that I wasn't alone, that my abuse wasn't my fault. Along the way, I fell in love with journalism's power to comfort the afflicted and broadcast the truth, something that I thought I would never be able to do in my case of abuse.
My decision a year ago to join Know Your IX, an activist group committed to ending gender-based violence on college campuses, was borne out of the same urge to instigate change and reveal the truth of that violence. And that, too, has become thoroughly entwined in my identity as a journalist. I profile journalists and activists for Know Your IX and write guides for journalists on how to ethically report on gender-based violence; I write about sexual assault for the alt-weekly I now work for. For me, journalism and activism are two sides of the same (perhaps foolish) ideal: bringing the truth to light so that it may help others.
And yet, watching the disintegration of Rolling Stone's story has been a brutal reminder of the enormous chasm of understanding that too often stands between journalists and survivors. How could reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely be so insensitive as to refuse when Jackie asked to be taken out of the article? How can Rolling Stone be so cruel as to say Jackie was a liar, rather than own up to the numerous holes in its reporting? How could Richard Bradley, the editor-in-chief of Worth magazine, be so dismissive as to reduce the account to "apocryphal tropes"? How can journalism, the profession that I so deeply love and the field that saved me, be failing me as a survivor of the trauma that has so shaped the journalist I am?
Journalists calling for higher level of scrutiny in sexual assault stories, or suggesting that more cases be treated as potential false reports, are not improving journalism. They are falling back on rape-culture tropes and weighing survivors down with an even heavier burden of proof than the one we must already carry. Instead, they should be educating themselves on the realities of trauma and focusing on how to improve their reporting on sexual violence. The burden of this journalistic failure should be one for reporters to bear, not survivors.
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29 Horrific Things That Happen Every Single Finals Week
See you on the other side.
Thinkstock / Candace Lowry / BuzzFeed
It's Sunday, and finals week has rolled around and you ask yourself, "How did I get here?"
You check your exam schedule one last time only to be reminded of how much it sucks.
Via metro.co.uk
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Here Is How I Am A Bad Sexual Assault Victim
I have to be, because the standards for being a “good” victim of sexual assault are impossibly high.
Getty Images/iStockphoto Yuanting
I am not a good victim of sexual assault. My assailant was not a stranger: We were on a date. I let him into my apartment and he eventually assaulted me there. After he left, he texted me saying that he had a great time and hoped to see me again soon. If you asked him today, I bet he'd tell you he was a modest, sweet, upstanding guy who had never assaulted or raped anyone. He even identified as a feminist.
A good victim is one who did nothing to "ask for it." A good victim does not know her assailant, is not around him willingly, isn't sexually active, isn't dressed provocatively, and isn't under the influence of drugs or alcohol. She makes it clear that the assault is not consensual, immediately reports it to the authorities, and cooperates with the investigation. No one can find fault with a good victim, because the good victim did everything in her power, and more, to prevent the assault from happening. The fault, therefore, can only lie with the assailant.
I'm a bad victim for a number of reasons. Perhaps the biggest reason is that I didn't even immediately process that what was happening to me was sexual assault: I turned numb, unable to think or react, and stayed that way for several days afterward. My sympathetic nervous system — the "fight-or-flight" response — chose the third, lesser-known option of "freezing." Most likely because of that, I think, my memory of the events before and after my assault is hazy, though I wasn't drunk at all. I don't remember exactly what we talked about at the restaurant beforehand, or what route we took to walk to my apartment, or what reason he gave for eventually leaving. I don't even remember the exact date on which it happened.
These blanks in my memory give others a reason to doubt my story — what if I was just making it all up for attention? — despite the fact that my memory of the assault itself is crystal clear. Because I didn't do everything right, because there is reason to doubt me, I am not a good victim.
In actuality, the "good victim" is a mythical archetype, simply a yardstick by which all other victims are measured. No one will ever be considered a good victim in our society, because there's always something one can find for which to fault the victim. Once there's anything at all to fault the victim for, she and her story lose all credibility and she becomes a bad victim.
This is what happened to Jackie, whose story of a brutal rape at the University of Virginia appeared in Rolling Stone. After it emerged that certain details of her account were incorrect, readers took this as a reason to disbelieve her story in its entirety. Jackie is clearly a bad victim because she might have been wrong about the fraternity her rapist was in, about where he worked part-time, and about the exact date she was raped. Because she lied, or was mistaken, or simply forgot about those details, the logic goes, it must mean that she wasn't really raped, either. Because Jackie is a bad victim, it must follow that her story is untrue.
Most disturbing is that Rolling Stone itself has disavowed Jackie as a source because of this. Will Dana, Rolling Stone's managing editor, wrote in a statement that "there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced." While Rolling Stone undoubtedly should not have published an article that had inconsistencies, the fact that Jackie got some details wrong is not reason for the rest of us to throw out her entire story. Victims of trauma often have trouble remembering the exact nature of their assault, including the date on which it occurred, for which my own story of sexual assault should serve as a case in point. This is the nature of trauma: It makes forgetting easy, because forgetting is exactly what a traumatized person wants to do. It's a coping mechanism.
Jackie is not a perfect victim, but no one is. No one can be, because it's an impossible standard to attain. Others have found justification to disbelieve Jackie's story, just as they could find reason to doubt mine or anyone else's. It's easier to dismiss victims of rape and sexual assault than it is to believe that these tragedies really happen. But take it from me that they do, far too often, and they are messy, unpleasant, disruptive affairs. Believe victims of rape and sexual assault when we come forward, even if we aren't perfect. Because I know what it's like to be a bad victim. So I believe Jackie and I believe her story. You should too.
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What Happened After I Was Sexually Assaulted In High School
I woke up naked to find three boys from my school sexually assaulting me. The aftermath was almost as bad.
BuzzFeed
There's a daunting document I can't seem to delete off my computer. It's titled "The Script." It's not some unfinished screenplay; it's the written recollection of my sexual assault.
One night in 2007, when I was 16, I ended up at a male friend's house with two other boys whom I knew in passing from high school. I overindulged in cheap beer that night and ended up eventually passing out. I awoke in a drunken stupor naked with the three boys sexually assaulting me. I wanted to scream, I wanted to run, but I was paralyzed. Within seconds I passed out again.
The next morning I woke up and was again surrounded by the three boys. Before I even had the chance to speak, the mental manipulation began. I was told that it was my fault, I drank too much, I wanted it, and if I told anyone they wouldn't believe me and it would end up ruining my life. Despite the boys' continuous threats, however, one of my attackers wrote me an apology letter admitting what they did was wrong and that he was deeply sorry. That's when I broke my silence about the attack and confided in a close friend. Luckily, that friend had enough sense to report it to school security, who quickly notified my parents.
The subsequent events were heartbreaking. Having to explain the attack to my parents was incredibly shameful. To make matters worse, we couldn't even get someone from my county's investigative department to come take a statement from me due to a lack of manpower. But thanks to the persistence and support of my parents, over the next couple days I was able to file a police report, withdraw from school, and start working with two detectives to pursue a criminal case.
From the beginning my detectives told me that they rarely take cases like mine due to conflicting statements and little evidence. So my first assignment from them was to write down every single detail of my attack. They called it a "script." They chose this particular word because my written story needed to be memorized, like a play, so I could accurately retell my story. Any missed or improvised details could prove fatal to my case. Amid seemingly endless doctor visits and coping with PTSD, I was expected to constantly relive the gruesome details of my attack.
Within the next month, two of the three attackers were arrested and interviewed. Unsurprisingly, their recollection of the attack differed greatly from mine. This meant communicating the details of my script to the grand jury was even more vital.
After weeks of preparation, it was time to present my case to the grand jury. My anxiety increased as soon as I stepped through the courthouse doors. When it came time to speak, I was escorted into a small, stuffy room and presented to an audience of strangers. I started out strong, but my insecurity and anxiety started clouding my mind. I cried, I stuttered, I lost my train of thought and forgot details from my script. I left the room in tears and waited for their decision.
Three excruciating hours passed before I received the grand jury's verdict. They were not going to charge my three attackers. My entire body shut down; I was numb. The district attorney told me this was a classic "he said, she said" case, and the grand jury wasn't presented with enough evidence to indict my attackers. The written apology didn't carry weight with the grand jury, as he never explicitly mentioned what he was apologizing for.
In my eyes this verdict meant they were calling me a liar, that the attack was my fault. I blamed myself for the loss, as I wasn't able to represent myself and the facts to the best of my best ability.
To add to my anxiety from the verdict, school was set to start in a few weeks and I was notified that one of my attackers would be returning to finish his senior year. My parents went directly to the administration to see what could be done; the administration said their hands were tied and there was nothing they could legally do. I spent an entire school year dodging glares and vicious words from my attacker and his friends who tormented me on a daily basis. What shocked me the most was that the majority of harassment and shaming came from women. This forced me to face, and cope with, my sexual assault every day.
I am happy to report that with the support of friends, family, and therapists, I was finally able to write a happy ending to my script. This experience instilled a strong will within me to fight for myself. I've learned to accept that not everyone will believe my story. I'm not going to let the ignorance of others define my life.
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17 Genius Ways To Make Thin Hair Look Seriously Thick
Go thick or go home.
Getty Images/iStockphoto Choreograph
Pinterest is going to tell you to use coconut oil. Don't do it if you have thin hair.
"Oil just adds shine, it won't actually make anything better. Silicones and oils just become a coating on top of hair, so it's very difficult to remove. Eventually, it weighs down your hair and you get tons of build up and it actually makes your hair look thinner," Lily Yip, master stylist at Mizu Salon, tells BuzzFeed Life.
Steer clear of shampoos with ammonium lauryl sulfate or sodium lauryl sulfate.
"People with thin hair need to avoid detergents, polymers, proteins, damaging alcohols, and ammonia that is found in traditional shampoos in the form of ammonium lauryl sulfate or sodium lauryl sulfate. These ingredients are added to make the shampoo feel thicker and richer in your hand, and also to create the foaming lather people have come to expect. The reality is that these same ingredients are incredibly harsh and drying to your hair and scalp," Chaz Dean, creator of WEN Hair Care, tells BuzzFeed Life.
Everything Lovely and Chic / Via everythinglovelyandchic.blogspot.com
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A Man Movingly Spoke Live On Radio About What It's Like To Be Too Poor To Eat In The UK
“You walk to to the cupboard 50 times a day and there’s nothing there and it doesn’t change.”
Mike, a 35-year old from New Cross, London, said he had lost his job through redundancy; the pressure this put on his relationship had caused his marriage to break apart, he claimed, and his situation had worsened very quickly.
And I ended up... I live in a tiny room, and what you get covers just what you need, and you have to go to food banks, and sometimes I'm living off a tin of spaghetti a day, or a tin of beans, and there are people out there who really are struggling, and it's not fun.
...for these people to sit there to say, "Oh, go and get a job" – I'm out there every day, looking and searching, and you know you're trying to do it on your own, but you can't, and it gets harder and harder... [breaks up] I'm sorry.
He described the reality of day-to-day life for someone living below the poverty line.
It's really tough out there, and the government don't help you, they don't help you at all, and they make it as hard as possible, and you sit there, and you don't know what you're going to do, and you don't know what you're going to eat, and you walk to to the cupboard 50 times a day and there's nothing there and it doesn't change.
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17 Fetch Christmas Gifts Every '00s Girl Must Have
“You’re like, really pretty.”
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
This Mean Girls poster.
Perfect for every Regina George fan.
This One Tree Hill-inspired bracelet.
For anyone who wishes they'd gone to Tree Hill High.
This Harry Potter stationery set.
The perfect gift for any girl who is still waiting for her Hogwarts acceptance letter.
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"The Newsroom," UVA, And Our "Moral Obligation" To Believe Alleged Rapists
The most recent episode of the HBO series perfectly captures rape culture in the wake of Rolling Stone ‘s apology for “misplacing trust” in an alleged rape victim at the University of Virginia . WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the Dec. 7 episode of The Newsroom .
Don (Thomas Sadoski) on The Newsroom
HBO
On the Dec. 7 episode of HBO's The Newsroom, Princeton University student Mary (Sarah Sutherland) tells Don (Thomas Sadoski), an executive producer on the fictional news program Right Now With Elliot Hirsch, about how she was raped. He listens to her story, and he tells her that she is credible, that he has spoken to her less-than-credible alleged attacker, who maintains that it was not rape but consensual sex. "I'm obligated to believe the sketchy guy," Don tells Mary. "I believe I'm morally obligated."
The Newsroom, now in its third and final season, has been criticized during its short life for its female characters: They are often silly and incompetent. But this particular morality tale — Don and Mary's conversation is long, and the scene is woven throughout the episode — is The Newsroom's worst instance of woman-hating. And it is a terrible coincidence that the episode is airing the Sunday after Rolling Stone wrote that its reporter had "misplaced" trust (phrasing the magazine later changed) in Jackie, the subject of a long article about her alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia.
Like a good journalist, The Newsroom's Don listens to Mary, who went to the police, though the perpetrators were not punished. Her rape story apparently wasn't good enough to merit further attention. (It's a dangerous misunderstanding on the show's part about the structural insidiousness of campus rape: One of the main problems is that a student like Mary would be discouraged from going to the police in the first place.) With no one to advocate for her, Mary anonymously built a website for herself and other women to — anonymously, if they choose — name their attackers publicly.
Also in the episode, titled "Oh Shenandoah," Will (Jeff Daniels), the anchor and managing editor of News Night, is in jail for not revealing the name of a source. There, Will shares his cell with a prodding foil: a man jailed for domestic battery who complains that he received a harsh punishment because there were "nine women on the jury."
Sitting in a Princeton dorm room, Don tries to convince Mary to take her website down, "to ensure an innocent person isn't destroyed." What about the men, he essentially pleads. One example he offers of the type of person who might post a false allegation on the site is "a woman who feels rejected." And we're meant to be on his side, really. In rape culture, being accused of rape is worse than rape. In rape culture, when we have to decide whose story to believe, it is our moral obligation to believe that the alleged attacker is telling the truth and the alleged victim is a liar.
Mary (Sarah Sutherland) in the Dec. 7 episode of The Newsroom
HBO
When Mary tells Don that she went to the authorities and no one helped her, he says, "In fairness, the law wasn't built to serve victims." He continues, "I'm the guy who goes around saying O.J.'s not guilty because a jury said so." It's strange for a journalist to say a jury is the ultimate arbiter of truth, that once the verdict comes down, there are no more questions to be asked. Furthermore, it's a callous thing to say to a woman who just told him that she, like so many rape victims, will never get a trial because her story isn't quite right, because she drank too much tequila, because the accused man says she wanted it — like UVA's Jackie, who went to the administration with a story of gang rape and was offered mediation.
Don's boss wants Mary to come on the show and face off with her alleged attacker. It is horrible to ask a rape victim to be in the same room with her rapist, let alone to "debate" him about the particulars of the trauma. Yet Mary, surprisingly, not only wants to go on the show and confront her attacker, she is eager to do so — Don, who apparently knows what is best for her, urges her not to. "You won't get the justice you're looking for," he says, which is to say, If the system failed you, it's time to shut up.
But Mary doesn't want to shut up. "I'm gonna win this time," she tells him.
There is no winning, of course. Don doesn't want her to tell her story on TV, and so he lies and says that he never found her. He becomes another man who doesn't listen, another man who claims to know what a woman wants better than she knows what she wants, another man who wants a woman's story to go away. And this is because he believes he is "morally obligated" to follow the courtroom tenet, "Innocent until proven guilty," despite the fact that there is no courtroom, there is no judge, there is no sentence coming down; despite the fact that following this tenet requires him to believe that the woman across from him is a liar.
At one point, Don starts to say that Mary's "kind" of rape is difficult to prosecute. "It's not a kind of rape," she shoots back, leading him to backtrack a little ("Sure").
On Friday, Rolling Stone issued an apology to its readers after discrepancies emerged in the facts of the story, "A Rape on Campus," about Jackie. But since it was originally posted, the magazine quietly backtracked on its apology. The words "we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her is misplaced" no longer appear. Instead, the apology now reads, "These mistakes are on Rolling Stone, not on Jackie." Of course, Rolling Stone's Managing Editor Will Dana, whose name appeared at the bottom of the original apology note, didn't mean it like that. But that is exactly how we're meant to think about rape. If it's not the right kind of rape, and if you don't tell your story exactly right, you are probably a liar. If we're following the rules of a society where 1 in 5 women is sexually assaulted, we're obligated to believe the alleged rapist. And if you talk about the crime anonymously — like The Newsroom's Mary and UVA's Jackie — you will also be doxxed as part of your suffering: Don painstakingly (and smugly) lays out to Mary how he found her through his excellent reporting skills that the show fetishizes. (Something even uglier has begun to happen to Jackie.)
At the end of Sunday's episode of The Newsroom, Charlie (Sam Waterston), the head of Atlantis Cable News (ACN) on which Will and Don's shows air, has a heart attack and dies. Mary's story was never important to The Newsroom; it was just a diverting little rape interlude in a bigger story. Nothing to see here.
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31 Subscription Gifts They'll Love All Year
Give the gift of a good mail day.
Bourbon Every Month
Ideal for your brother, who is always mansplaining your beer to you. $220 for a 3-month subscription, Mouth.
A Year Of Amazon Prime
Free-two day shipping on pretty much everything — perfect for your parents who just discovered the joy of shopping online. $99 for one year, Amazon.
A Local Museum Membership
For anyone who feels the need to remind regularly you that they don't even own a TV. Price varies by museum/city.
csaba fikker / Via Thinkstock.com
A Yoga Podcast & Video Subscription
For the friend who travels for work constantly. $90 for a full year of unlimited streaming and downloadable videos and podcasts, YogaDownload.
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