“The Independent”

Google Trends: Inclusion Rider

Frances McDormand, Oscars 2018 (The Independent UK)

With Frances McDormand mentioning the inclusion rider clause during her speech while accepting the Best Actress Oscar, I wondered how the concept was rising as a search term. Let’s take a look using Google Trends!

First, here’s how the search term “inclusion” performed over the last 12 months:

Google Trends: Search Term “Inclusion” Over the Past 12 Months (Google Trends)

See that spike? That was for the week of March 4-10, 2018. The Oscars took place on Sunday, March 4. No coincidence there!

Here are the search term’s top five related topics:

Google Trends: “Inclusion” Search Term Related Topics (Google Trends)

Clearly, McDormand was a large driver of traffic in the search term. Another thing to note is that two of the suggested search terms autofilled for “inclusion” are “subset” and “social exclusion.”

Now let’s take a look at how the actual term “inclusion rider” performed:

Google Trends: “Inclusion Rider” Search Term for Past 12 Months (Google Trends)

Another big spike! And in that same week! In this case, correlation equals causation.

Weird thing about the suggested search terms: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck both appear as suggestions, but not Frances McDormand. Hmm. This suggests to me that more people are searching for the term now with regards to Damon and Affleck, but not McDormand.

Here are the related topics for “inclusion rider:”

Google Trends: “Inclusion Rider” Related Topics (Google Trends)

That’s pretty straightforward.

It’s pretty cool to see empirical evidence that this concept is gaining awareness! Though Merriam-Webster could already attest to that.

#ThrowbackThursday: Eartha Kitt as Catwoman in “Batman,” 1967

Eartha Kitt as Catwoman (Pinterest)

Many people know Julie Newmar as Catwoman in the 1960s TV series “Batman,” but there was a second Catwoman as well! Actress and singer Eartha Kitt took over the role in 1967. Kitt was already famous by this time, having danced with the Katherine Dunham Company, recorded several songs and had been acting for many years.

Kitt played Catwoman from 1967 to 1968. Not bad for a woman Orson Welles called “the most exciting woman on Earth.”

Bus Permits for the Women’s March Outnumber Bus Permits for the Inauguration by a 1:6 Ratio

Women's Strike For Peace And Equality March, 1970 (Time)

Women’s Strike for Peace-And Equality, Women’s Strike for Equality, Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, August 26, 1970. (Photo by Eugene Gordon/The New York Historical Society/Getty Images)Women’s Strike For Peace And Equality March, 1970 (Time)

Friday, January 20th is Inauguration Day for the president-elect. The Women’s March takes place the next day. (Who’s going? I am!) D.C. can already tell the event is sure to be huge, judging by the number of bus permits secured. And the March might overshadow the previous day’s activities.

According to D.C. Council member Charles Allen, 1,200 buses have secured parking permits for the day of the March in RFK Stadium. (RFK Stadium has a capacity of 1,300 buses.) By contrast, just 200 buses have registered for parking permits for Inauguration Day. For every bus that has registered for the inauguration, six buses have registered for the March.

For President Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2009, 3K buses registered for permits. Bus registrations for the current president-elect comprised 6.67% of that total.

Attendees for the March are expected to number as many as 200K.

Hopefully, this detail begins getting the message to the president-elect loud and clear that we will not be ignored.

Beauty Blogger James Charles is CoverGirl’s First Cover Boy

James Charles (Elle)

Cosmetics giant CoverGirl made history this past week with the announcement of their newest spokesmodel. The newest face is 17-year-old beauty blogger James Charles, who’s made history as the first male spokesmodel for CoverGirl. He’ll advertise the brand’s So Lashy mascara, and has already met fellow spokesmodel Katy Perry.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard Charles’ name: He came to our attention earlier this year with a tweet showing off his redone senior portraits, complete with notable highlight and his own ring light.

Charles only began experimenting with makeup last year, and has already amassed 74K+ subscribers to his YouTube channel and 500K followers on Instagram.

Charles’ selection isn’t without precedent, as men have been used in cosmetics advertising before: MAC has used RuPaul and Johnny Weir before.

Almost 50% of British Women Can’t Identify the Vagina

Female reproductive diagram (Pinterest)

Well, this is alarming. A new study that surveyed 1K British women found that only 56% of women could identify the vagina from a medical diagram. For those of you who can’t do math, that’s 44% of women who can’t identify the vagina. And that’s way too high.

By contrast, nearly 70% of women could identify the male reproductive organs from a diagram. (Full disclosure: this was me in fifth grade health class. But then I got some knowledge.)

The study turned up some other things to note: Less than 30% of women could correctly identify all six parts of the women’s reproductive system from the same diagram. Also, only one in seven women were able to name a cancer that affects the reproductive organs. (The study was done by The Eve Appeal, a UK-based gynecological charity in awareness of September being Gynaecological Cancer Awareness Month.)

The study also turned up the interesting note that women ages 65 and older were most likely to have scant knowledge of their reproductive organs, with less than one of four women able to name even one part. This might speak to a divide in sexual and health education between generations.

Not to be dramatic, but knowing this information could save your life, or the life of another woman you know.

France Outlaws Paying for Sex

French prostitutes (The Independent UK)

Earlier this month, France made a major move: The country has now made paying for sex illegal.

If someone is caught paying for sex, they’ll be fined up to $1.7K for a first offense, and up to $4.2K+ for a second time. The offender may also be required to attend classes on sex workers’ conditions.

France isn’t the only country to pass a measure of this kind, or even the first: The country follows in the footsteps of the U.K., Sweden, Iceland, and Norway.

Advocates of the new ban claim that this will help sex workers get out of the trade. But sex workers are opposing this new measure, reasoning that it will expose them to more violence.

It’s estimated that France has between 20K to 40K sex workers. (Naturally, it’s difficult to get an accurate count.)

The UK Bans Certain Sex Acts in Porn

Handcuffs, a.k.a. “physical restraint” (Fleshlight)

Earlier this month, the United Kingdom enacted a ban on certain sex acts in porn. The ban amends the 2003 Communications Act, which previously sketched in “unacceptable” acts as ones associated with violence and abuse.

Now, the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) has narrowed down their lists of “good” and “bad” sexual acts to very specific, fetish-focused ones. Per “The Independent:”

The Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014 requires that video-on-demand (VoD) online porn now adhere to the same guidelines laid out for DVD sex shop-type porn by the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC).

The acts listed under “content that is not acceptable” includes a variety of BDSM-related activities, age-play, and female ejaculation. Almost all of the sex acts listed are included under the BBFC’s “Restricted 18” rating, which means that the films can only be shown at licensed adult cinemas and sex shops.

Now this only applies to porn made within the UK, and porn made outside its bounds is totally fair game to have any of these “unacceptable” acts. I have to wonder if this will lead to a rise in Brits importing their porn to see these now-illicit acts. Now foreign porn production houses can get themselves piece of that hardcore caning action:

Pornhub’s UK Banned Porn Content Table (The Independent)

(Side note: I’d love to know how these nine acts were agreed upon. And how female ejaculation made its way in. It doesn’t seem to fit with the overall theme of violence and pain the rest of the entries have. Seriously, what’s up with that?!)

The UK has had a long, uncomfortable history attempting to regulate porn. (Robert Rosen’s “Independent” article provides some enlightening historical context.) The country only legalized hardcore porn in 2000, about 30 years after the rest of the Western world. And you’d be considered a criminal for possessing “non-realistic sexual images of a minor,” or, in popular parlance, cartoon porn.

This ruling certainly changes the game for British porn producers and consumers, so it’ll be interesting to watch how its landscape changes over time. Who knows, Britain could, at some point, enact a law dictating that only a certain amount of porn can be imported at any given time. After all, Pelchat’s amendment worked for French radio.

Sex & Stats: Where Numbers Come to Bang

Statistics. Economics. Sex.