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Ever since she made her debut in 1959, Barbie has been both celebrated for her wide range of careers and criticized for her unrealistic body image. As the first mass-produced doll toy with adult features, Barbie has been an iconic part of childhood imaginary play for decades despite her controversy, and as the hype around the new Barbie feature film shows, she’s still a favorite among fans.
One way Barbie has managed to stay relevant is by evolving with the times. In her earliest years, she defied the 50s housewife expectation of women and showed girls that they could have any job they wanted. Since then, Mattel has broadened Barbie’s initial blonde bombshell look to allow more girls to see themselves in Barbie’s features.
For instance, meet one of the newest Barbie Fashionistas—the first Barbie to have Down syndrome. |
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Ask any employee about the essential motivating factor in their job and many will say their paycheck. However, companies have entered a juncture where they cannot afford to pay their employees. They put employees in difficult positions with significant pay cuts which eventually leads to them quitting their jobs. In a recent Reddit post, an employee detailed why he left a job after his employer attempted to cut his pay.
The employee, who goes by u/cjmaddux on Reddit, explains that he worked as a consulting salesperson in the building materials industry in a small town for long hours. He ended up in charge of nearly half of the business. He mentioned that the long hours and pressure from larger companies made him miss family time and began to take a toll on his personal life. “I asked my boss to either reduce my hours while keeping my annual pay the same or pay me more per hour to stay on the same schedule, as my time with my family was too valuable to me to continue the way we were going,” he writes. |
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Parents who misbehave at their kids’ sporting events have become so commonplace that it’s forced sports psychologists to come up with a name for the behavior: Little League Parent Syndrome (LLPS).
Parents with LLPS are known for sitting in the stands and verbally abusing other players, parents, referees and umpires during games. This behavior has led to a decrease in the number of umpires and referees in youth sports because volunteers aren’t willing to subject themselves to harassment.
“There has been a huge drop off in the number of available referees and officials in youth sports due to the obnoxious behavior of parents,” says Rick Wolff, a sports-parenting expert, author, and 20-year host of the WFAN radio’s “The Sports Edge,” told The Washington Post.
So what has driven parents to such extreme behavior? |
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As anyone born after 1997 can attest, taking photos feels awkward. Unless you’re a professional model, it’s nigh on impossible to nail a pose and facial expression that isn’t completely cringey—and even harder to not get stuck in the same pose and facial expression that seemed to work once upon a time over and over again.
That’s with a traditional photography setup. Now, with most pictures being taken with our camera phones, there’s the additional variable of having to find the perfect angle ourselves. It’s all a recipe for tragic, embarrassing disaster, I tell you.
However, scroll through any Gen Zer’s social media and you’ll see a treasure trove of effortlessly cool and candid selfies. Sure, the cynic might say it’s purely the use of filters that makes their images look that way, but there’s more to it than that. And posing expert Christine Buzan has the perfect explanation. |
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Having a pen pal can be really rewarding. In the early 90s, when letter writing was still a required learning objective and classes got to have penpals from another school, it was exciting to build a connection with someone through writing letters. But for most of us, that practice died off as we started making those lasting connections through social media.
But when Ginny Schrappen got word from her church’s deacon that a prisoner wanted a pen pal more than two decades ago, before social media was a thing, she stepped up to volunteer. According to CBS Evening News, Lamar Johnson wrote to Schrappen’s church hoping that one of the parishioners would write to him while he was in prison.
Others may have been turned off due to the crime for which Johnson was imprisoned, which was murder. But Schrappen figured, “He’s not going to come and get me.” |
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