ARP Tuesday Links

Is there a magazine this smart for 30-something secular chicks? Danya Ruttenberg’s brief about “Muslim Girl” magazine in the latest issue of Bitch magazine (the same one with a great article by ARP contributor Deesha Philyaw) piqued my interest. There are so few smart and engaging magazines that talk to girls (or women).  Ruttenberg says:

It’s every bit as cool as you would hope: The “models” are all real, diverse women; the music and book recommendations are non-sucky; and there are profiles of regular teenagers and adult women doing all sorts of ass-kickingly good things, from spoken-word poetry and news broadcasting to aikido and hockey. Learn more about the magazine…

The neighborhood swimming pool as a (social) petri dish: “Contested Waters,” a book by Jeff Wiltse examines the social history of swimming pools in America.

Early on, blacks and whites swam together, but pool sessions were segregated by gender. Then in the 1920s and ’30s, cities began allowing men and women to swim together to promote family togetherness. “Swimming pools became social melting pots into which males and females, young and old, and working class and middle class all plunged together,” Wiltse writes.

Unless you were black.

The iconic photographs show African-American children staring longingly through a chain-link fence at white children splashing in a pool. It gets uglier. Angry mobs with baseball bats; bloodied bodies prone.

“Historically, people perceived being in the same enclosed body of water as tantamount to physical contact,” Wiltse says. “The sexual security of women was at the heart of the conflict.” Naturally, there were lawsuits, often as vehement as the legal battles over school desegregation. Eventually, when black Americans gained equal access to public pools, Wiltse says, white swimmers generally abandoned them for private swim clubs, backyard pools, the suburbs. By the 1970s and ’80s, many of the nation’s municipal pools crumbled into disrepair. Read more…

The “lost” tribe that wasn’t: Remember the photos of the supposedly “unknown” indigenous group on the Brazil/Peru border that had the media hyperventilating a few weeks ago? The ones that showed people painted bright red and black with weapons pointed at what must have been a frightening intrusion–an aircraft hovering over their isolated village?  It turns out that an expert on indigenous tribes purposefully sought out the group, which has been known for more than a century.

What he was looking for was not only proof of life, but firm evidence that the tribes in this area were flourishing – proof in his view that the policy of no contact and protection was working. On the last day, with only a couple hours of flight time remaining, Meirelles spotted a large community.

‘When I saw them painted red, I was satisfied, I was happy,’ he said. ‘Because painted red means they are ready for war, which to me says they are happy and healthy defending their territory.’

Survival International, the organisation that released the pictures along with Funai, conceded yesterday that Funai had known about this nomadic tribe for around two decades. It defended the disturbance of the tribe saying that, since the images had been released, it had forced neighbouring Peru to re-examine its logging policy in the border area where the tribe lives, as a result of the international media attention. Activist and former Funai president Sydney Possuelo agreed that – amid threats to their environment and doubt over the existence of such tribes – it was necessary to publish them. Read more…