Last Call for Coming of Age Submissions!

Hi, girls! Just a quick reminder: New Moon is looking for a short paragraph from girls all over the world describing how their culture celebrates a girl's coming of age. Maybe it's a Sweet Sixteen, a Wiccan ceremony, a Native American tradition, a Quinceanera, a Bat Mitzvah... Or maybe your responsibilities change, for better or worse, within your religious community or family.

We want to hear from YOU about how your culture celebrates a girl’s rite of passage. Tell us: Is there a ceremony or ritual to mark reaching a certain age? What new roles and responsibilities do you take on as you transition to womanhood? Is it a positive experience?

Please send your responses by the end of the day on Friday, July 6! Or, if you have a contact in another part of the world that you think might like to share her own experience, please let us know by then.

Selected responses will be featured in the January/February 2008 issue, "Through the Looking Glass: Coming of Age."

Can't wait to hear from you!

Write a Howling at the Moon Piece!

Hey, girls! Looking for an opportunity to write for New Moon?

New Moon is looking for a few Howling at the Moon pieces (under 100 words) for our September/October 2007 issue, The Great Debate. Would you like to write a Howling at the Moon piece? If so, tell us:

• Have you seen or heard anything in the media lately that makes you proud to be a girl or woman? Maybe you heard a news article about something great that a girl was doing, or you've been following a successful woman in politics.


• What in your daily life has made you want to celebrate being a girl or woman? This could be something that happened in school, sports, music, activism, or pretty much any other area of your life!


• How have you or someone you know fought back against sexism, racism, or any other -ism? Share your successes!

Those are just a few ideas to get you writing about something that made you really happy--something that made you want to howl at the moon.

If you've got a Howling at the Moon piece, you'll need to act fast--email your piece to

blog@newmoon.org by Thursday morning for it to be considered!

Can't wait to hear your awesome Howlings!

'Street Harassment Is a Crime!'

Last month, the Village Voice reported on Girls for Gender Equality, a Brooklyn, NY group that's taking their fight against street harassment to the front lines of their battle--the very streets of their neighborhoods. They're speaking up and using their voices to remind their city that street harassment is a crime!

Like Holla Back NYC, a photoblog that allows women to respond to street harassment by photographing their harasser and posting it on the blog, the Girls for Gender Equality's project is a grassroots way to take a stand against harassment and show that girls and women have a right to feel comfortable and safe in public spaces.

The girls, who range in age from 15 to 18, shot and directed an 18-minute documentary on street harassment by interviewing the harassers themselves, work to raise awareness of street harassment within Brooklyn's diverse cultures, and organized workshops on self-defense and responding to street harassment. They also created posters, described here by the Village Voice:

The poster features a young woman standing in front of the shadows of men and a checklist: "I am followed by older men every day after school," "I am afraid to walk with my sisters or friends at night," and "Men think my name is 'Psst . . . ma!' or 'Ayo, shorty!' " Under the line "Street Harassment Is a Crime!" reads: "New York law prohibits street harassment (Article 120 and Article 240). You are not alone."

You go, girls!

The project reminds me of The Blank Noise Project, a public art project started to address street harassment in India. The project includes public displays of the actual clothes that victims were wearing when they were harassed (to fight the myth that only women wearing ‘provocative’ clothes are harassed) and spray-painted stories of sexual harassment in public places, created by victims of harassment. It's very cool--check it out!

P.S. Looking for your own ways to fight back against street harassment? Try these tips, adapted from the Dane County Rape Crisis Center in Madison, WI:

1. Name the behavior and the person behind it. For example, “Don’t stare at me. That’s harassment” or “You, the man in the blue polo shirt, stop making catcalls.”
2. Use a ‘silent stare.’ Sometimes, a stare is more powerful than words. Staring at a harasser turns the tables on the harasser.
3. ‘Bring it home.’ Try, “I hope nobody ever treats your mom the way you’re treating me.”
4. Use strong body language: hold your head high, look your harasser in the eye, and speak clearly and loudly

Looking for an inspiring (and thought-provoking) movie to watch? Check out War Zone, a 1998 documentary created by filmmaker Maggie Hadleigh-West. Here's what the Media Education Foundation says about the movie:

What does it feel like to be a woman on the street in a cultural environment that does nothing to discourage men from heckling, following, touching or disparaging women in public spaces?

Filmmaker Maggie Hadleigh-West believes that the streets are a War Zone for women. Armed with only a video-camera, she both demonstrates this experience and, by turning and confronting her abusers, reclaims space that was stolen from her.

War Zone is an excellent discussion starter for both men and women. It gives voice and expression to a disturbing daily aspect of being a woman in this society. It also gives men a direct personal feeling for what harassing behavior looks and feels like to a woman. Young men who may think such behavior is cool or funny will be forced to rethink their assumptions.

When I watched War Zone with a mixed-gender group at my high school, it sparked some of the most interesting discussions on gender I'd ever heard. Click here to watch a YouTube trailer for the film!

Courtney E. Martin on Food, Body Image, and Eating Disorders

More than half of American women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five would prefer to be run over by a truck or die young than be fat. More than two-thirds would rather be mean or stupid, writes Courtney E. Martin in her new book on food, body image, and eating disorders, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: the Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body.

As we all well know, eating disorders are skyrocketing—some ten million Americans now suffer from them, and 90% of high school-aged girls think they are overweight. Courtney E. Martin, the 20-something writer extraordinaire (check out her bio at the end of this post), set out at age 25 to figure out the WHYs on food, body image, and eating disorders—Why did all of her friends suffer from a full-fledged eating disorder or, at least, struggle with food and fitness? Why are eating disorders still claiming the lives of so many young women? Why is it that when girls are told, “you can be anything,” they hear, “you must be everything”?

As she wrote, “I set out asking: How did we become so obsessed with perfection, so preoccupied with food and fitness, and what can we do to reclaim our time and energy?” Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, published by Simon & Schuster in April, is her answer.

It’s an incredible book. I don't hesitate at all in telling YOU, the New Moon blog reader, to read it, then share what you've read with your friends, your sisters, your cousins, your teachers, your parents… Not only because the book is so compelling, but because it’s so important that we as girls and women finally get to the bottom of our obsessions with our food and our bodies.

Courtney was nice enough to answer New Moon’s questions on her book, eating disorders, body image, and feminism. First, a teaser from her Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters:

“There is a girl, right now, staring in a mirror in Des Moines, scrutinizing her widening hips. There is a girl, right now, spinning like a hamster on speed in a gym on the fifth floor of a building in Boston, promising herself dinner if she goes two more miles. There is a girl, right now, in a London bathroom, trying not to get any vomit on her aunt’s toilet seat. There is a girl, right now, in Berlin, cutting a cube of cheese and an apple into barely visible pieces to eat for her dinner…Our bodies are the places where our drive for perfection gets played out. We demand flawlessness in our appearance—the outer manifestation of our inner dictators.”

Perhaps you don’t have an inner dictator, but don’t all of us have that lurking desire to be the supergirl? As Courtney writes, “Our mothers had the luxury of aspiring to be 'good,' but we have the ultimate goal of ‘effortless perfection.’”

Read on for Courtney’s fascinating responses to New Moon’s questions.

***

NM: What inspired you to write Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters?
CM: Through out high school and college, I felt surrounded by brilliant, beautiful friends who were obsessed with food and fitness, perfectionist, and often self-hating. When I asked older women about this phenomenon, they would often essentially respond, “Get used to it. This is just part of being a woman.” I refused to believe that. The book grew out of the outrage that I felt over my friends’ pain and what appeared to be the general acceptance of it as a natural part of femaleness.

What audience is your book intended to reach—the perfect girls and starving daughters themselves, or their greater society?
I wrote this book for the 16 and 17 and 18 year old me, the girl who ached for something familiar and fiercely honest, the girl who really needed a call to action to stop settling for self-hate. So in essence, I wrote it for sophisticated teenagers and college students, primarily, and secondarily, for their mothers and fathers, educators, and coaches.

Describe a typical day in the life of Courtney E. Martin.
Almost every day is different for me, depending on whether I am conducting interviews or meeting with my agent or colleagues. Here’s what a day spent writing is like:

I wake up in my Brooklyn apartment which I share with my big brother, Chris, and do a little yoga or meditation. I make a cup of coffee and some toast with peanut butter and then settle in front of my computer. I try not to check email for a couple of hours so that I can get some focused writing time in before the onslaught of the outside world. Sometimes I’m working on a book, more often an article on feminism, politics, or pop culture.

I take my lunch break and read something—maybe a book I’m incorporating into an article, a magazine I’d like to write for, or the New York Times. Then I might take a walk in Prospect Park, which is right near my house. When I get back I’ll shower and then get right back to the computer. Email, email, email. Maybe a blog post or two. Pitching to editors. Trying to make contact with those I’d like to interview for a story. IM with my boyfriend, who works in film editing. Maybe a quick chat with my writing partner, Jennifer. More email, email, email.

I try to always stop working around 5 or 6 regardless of where I am in a process. I think freelancers can have two tendencies—underworking or overworking. I’m always in danger of the latter so I have to be vigilant with myself about stopping when the sun goes down.

At night I do a range of things—meet with my amazing writer’s group (www.crucialminutia.com), go to the movies, attend a friend’s reading etc. I always get eight hours of sleep. I’m a total nerd in that way.

What is the link between, as Arianna Huffington wrote in your book's advance praise, the need to “stop counting calories and start changing the world”?
The amount of time, energy, and willpower being displaced into dieting and fitness obsession is enormous. I get giddy just thinking about all of the amazing work we could do in the world if we spent that energy focusing on ways in which we can make the world more fair, and experience more joy, and fully embrace who we are and what we have come here to do with our lives. There is so much incredible potential locked up in counting calories and churning away on the exercise bike.

You focus on girls and women whose perfectionism drives their disordered eating and low self-esteem. What about girls and women with just plain bad body image, who don't necessarily have issues with perfectionism-how do they fit into the equation?
Not all women with eating disorders or disordered eating are perfectionist, certainly. I think that group of women is less prone to trying to fit into an unattainable ideal, and more prone to processing their emotions through food or a lack thereof. Though arguably all women struggling with these issues are having trouble healthily processing their emotions, perfectionist women tend towards anorexia as opposed to bulimia. There are plenty of nuances.

When it comes to body image and eating disorders, who is being an 8- to 14-year-old girl today different than it was for earlier generations?
I think that eating disorders have existed for earlier generations, but they were far less common and far less extreme. This generation of young women has been socialized to think that if they have enough will power and/or money they can look like anyone—Nicole Ritchie, Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry—regardless of what their genetic body type is. Young women today often have no idea that we each have an innate set point within which our body’s metabolism will naturally adjust. That’s why diets fail 95% of the time (and we still pump $30 billion a year into the industry!) We live in such an extreme makeover culture nowadays.

I also think we are dealing with a whole new world of opportunities—thanks to feminism—that can be paralyzing. We’ve watched our supermoms strive for super-achievement, and so often, their own health and care were sacrificed in the process. As a result, so many of us associate femaleness with exhaustion and self-sacrifice. Our mothers told us “You can be anything” and somehow we heard “I have to be everything.”

What will it take for more girls to start eating healthily-and start loving their bodies?
So, so much. To start with, each young woman can make the radical commitment to heal her relationship with her own body. That means reconnecting with your authentic hungers—when are you hungry? For what? When are you full? What does your body crave? (Usually, your body’s signals are smarter than your mind’s intellectualization of what you need.) How can you move in ways that make you feel happy as opposed to feeling trapped in joyless fitness regimens?

It also might take some outrage. Does it incense you that there are multiple markets making millions off of your insecurities? ($30 billion diet industry, $28 billion plastic surgery industry, $26 billion skincare and cosmetics industry) If we can externalize some of that anger instead of taking it out on ourselves, that can be hugely transformative.

If you could pinpoint the single best solution for improving girls’ body image and self-esteem, what would it be?
Focusing more on joy!

For a generation of girls that, in the words of Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, have grown up with feminism “in the water,” why is body image still such a huge issue? Why are rates of eating disorders still skyrocketing?
I think that the Second Wave of feminism [1960s-70s] did a tremendous job of creating institutional change, but wasn’t terribly effective at internalizing their own ideas. We’ve inherited that unfinished business.

As Susie Orbach wrote, ‘fat is a feminist issue.’ Why has thinness, in relation to the topics of eating disorders and low self-esteem, become one of the focal points of third wave feminism's work with girls?
It’s so insidious. Seven million girls and women in this country have textbook eating disorders and countless others are struggling though not diagnosable. The sheer numbers are horrifying. And then when you consider how powerful and successful young women are, in general, the contradiction is too glaring not to notice.

You call perfectionism "feminism's unintended legacy." Overall, do you think feminism has helped or hurt girls, especially in terms of long-term effects on self-esteem?
There is no question that feminism has made girls’ lives better in huge and profound ways. We are safer, more educated, and more liberated than any generation of women before us, and that is in large part due to the vigilant and enlightened work of our feminist foremothers.

Having said that, I do think that the lack of internalization of feminist ideas (equality, self care, etc.) has been a real problem, as has the misinterpretation of Feminism for “superwomen feminism”—that not only do women have opportunities, but they have to take advantage of ALL of them and excel perfectly. Not possible and truly unhealthy.

New Moon was one of the first publications you ever wrote for. Can you share any advice for girls who aspire to be writers or journalists?
Read and write as much as you can. I learned so much from writing for my high school and college newspapers—not just from the faculty advisers, but from my peers. Read authors you respect and write them emails expressing your gratitude and seeking mentorship. Don’t think that you have to be an English major once you get to college, although that’s fine too. The best writers and journalists are those who are totally fascinated with all sorts of quirky facets and subcultures. Cultivate your interests, as varied and seemingly strange as they may be. Eavesdrop, observe, write it all down. And finally, try to cultivate a group of peers who are interested in writing. I have been so enriched and supported by my amazing writer’s group, who are not famous, fancy writers but just my friends who are in the same boat, trying to make our way in the world.

You're definitely an author (and activist) to watch. What's next on your horizon?
I'm working on a few book projects, including an anthology on interracial relationships, a memoir by an amazing young woman from Nashville who is HIV positive and spreading the word about this devastating disease, and a book about “what matters now.” I’m blissfully all over the place!

Anything else you'd like our blog's readers to know?
Please check out my website (www.courtneyemartin.com) and feel free to write me emails. I love hearing from girls and I try to answer every email I get.


***

ABOUT COURTNEY

Originally from Colorado Springs, Courtney now lives in Brooklyn. She writes for an amazing range of national publications, including Newsweek, Newsday, Alternet, The Christian Science Monitor, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Utne Reader, Women's eNews, Poets & Writers, Publisher's Weekly, BUST, Bitch, and ReadyMade, among others. Courtney is also a contributing blogger for Crucial Minutiae and Feministing.

Courtney has an M.A. from New York University in writing and social change [very cool!] and a B.A. from Barnard College in political science and sociology. She spent six months studying in Cape Town, South Africa. She is currently an adjunct professor of gender studies at Hunter College.

When she isn't working, which is not nearly enough of the time, she is daydreaming about playing the blues harmonica, cooking dinner with her big brother, or making video documentaries with her boyfriend in Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn. Oh, or conspiring to create unselfconscious dance parties.

***

Some RESOURCES

• Visit Courtney's website


• Buy Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters


• Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness


• National Eating Disorders Association


• Body Positive


• Adios Barbie

On Hillary

If there’s a single woman capable of generating more debate than anyone else (except perhaps Paris Hilton), it’s gotta be Hillary Rodham Clinton. The former First Lady, current Senator, and perhaps future President is famous for sparking controversy.

Here at New Moon, we get our share of Hillary love letters. We’ve also heard from girls who are frustrated that Hillary gets so much attention just because, they claim, she’s a woman. Here’s what we want to know from YOU:

1. If you support Hillary, is it because she’s a woman, or do you support her regardless of her gender? What role does gender play in your political decisions?

2. When New Moon surveyed girls on politics last year, we found that 73% said you’d definitely vote for a woman for president. Would you vote for Hillary?

3. If you could vote for ANY woman for President (not necessarily a politician), who would you choose?

Email blog@newmoon.org and share your thoughts. You can write just a few words, or an entire op-ed article, explaining your views on women, politics, and the 2008 Presidential race. Reply by July 6, and we’ll post your thoughts in a special article on the New Moon News blog!

17-year-old Girl Shoots Flames 30 Feet Into Air from 7,000 Horsepower Tractor

No joke. As The New York Times reported today in its article Not Yet Legal for the Street, but a Whiz on a Tractor, 17-year-old Nicole Snyder, the youngest of just 8 women competing in Wisconsin's Dairyland Super National Truck and Tractor Pull last weekend, can do all that--and more--on her tractor armed with two jet engines and 7,000 horsepower (as much as an industrial helicopter!).

Reported The New York Times' Christopher Maag:

What really impressed the crowd were her flames. Tapping a button at the top of her throttle stick, which resembles the yoke on a fighter plane, Ms. Snyder shot yellow-white flames 30 feet into the air.

“Whoo-hoo!” yelled Chris Jelle, 54, a spectator from Belleville. “That’s a 17-year-old girl? Holy cow. That is awesome.”

A few seconds later, Ms. Snyder threw the throttle forward, sending the front tires of her tractor, the Legend, leaping off the dirt as she raced down the track in one long wheelie.

“It’s pretty fun, I guess,” she said after the run. “I haven’t had any big wrecks yet, so that’s good.”

Ironically, Nicole doesn't have her driver's license yet. But she has already taken third place at three different competitions. Go, girl!

Nicole during competition (on the blue tractor)

Introducing...the anti-chocolate

If all of big business' antics aren't enough to get Americans riled, this should: The New York Times reported earlier this week that the big companies that make America's prized chocolate are out to pull the wool over consumers' eyes:

"Real chocolate is made from crushed cacao beans, which provide not only solid cocoa mass but also cocoa butter that is vital to texture because, quite literally, it melts in your mouth. Industrial confectioners [i.e. big businesses] have petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to be able to replace cocoa butter with cheaper fats and still call the resulting product “chocolate.” The reason: the substitution would allow them to use fewer beans and to sell off the butter for cosmetics and such."

Of course, it's all about making a profit. But it will be interesting to see what it takes to get Americans up in arms over the fact that too many big businesses would rather make a buck than sell an honest product.

Perhaps not surprisingly, The San Francisco Chronicle editorialized today on behalf of this cause. Their editorial, "A Cry for Chocolate" (pardon the inner cynic, but aren't there better things to cry over?), makes the interesting point that the real-vs.-fake privileges that this change could bring would only become a new difference between the haves and the have-nots.

Leave a comment and tell us what you think.

Will the Madness Ever Cease?

The Chicago Tribune reported today that a first edition Harry Potter book fetched $18,000 at an auction yesterday.

The paper noted, "First editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone — published in the United States as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone — are valuable because of their rarity, the auction house said. The publishers produced between 500 and 1,000 copies in the book's first run. "

Amazing what people will spend on one little (okay, maybe Harry Potter isn't so little) book.

Your thoughts, readers?

Lisa Ling Asks, "Who Cares About Girls?"

A note to girls and adults: This post deals with serious issues, like human trafficking, sexual slavery, and child labor, that may be inappropriate for younger girls. Please read with discretion. Girls--if anything you read makes you upset, talk to an adult!

Earlier this week, I wrote on global girls’ access to education. Today, I’ll explore what life is like for the millions of girls around the world out of school each year—specifically, those in India, where over 30 million girls go to work each day instead of to school.

I commented yesterday on the mainstream media’s embarrassingly pathetic fixations on celeb gossip—and it’s frequent failures to address major issues facing girls and women around the world. Fortunately, Oxygen, Oprah’s television network, is one of a handful of dedicated media outlets out to change that.

On Sunday, Oxygen’s Lisa Ling premiered a collaboration with The Global Fund for Women on India’s working girls. If you watched it, you’ll understand my enthusiasm for their mind-blowing coverage. If not, read on for some incredible stories.

Nineteen-year-old Rinku is a warrior for teen girls’ lives. Rinku works as a counselor and advocate for STOP, an incredible organization working on the front lines to rescue girls from trafficking.

Over 500,000 Indian girls have been enslaved in forced prostitution by the country’s lucrative trafficking industry. Some 10,000 girls join the industry each year (usually unwillingly), and their average age is a mere 14. Some are stolen from their homes or kidnapped while traveling, others are country girls duped into believing they’re entering domestic jobs in the cities, and still others are sold by family members who must chose between the girl’s freedom and their children starving. [India is such a poor country that many live off of $1 or $2 a day.]

Rinku, who became a victim of trafficking at an early age herself, is working to save Indian girls from trafficking one by one. She patrols travelers’ rest-stops, a common location for trafficking, to rescuer girls before they fall in the hands of the most notorious traffickers. She visits slums where trafficking rings are disappearing more girls each day. She goes to brothels undercover to try to convince girls to leave with her. [Enslaved girls are often brainwashed by their captors.] And she stages brothel raids, which easily turn dangerous when corrupt police officers and armed brothel owners arrive.

Rinku wages her battles in a dangerous underworld ruled by greed and power. At age 19, she’s risked her life too many times to count. But she says she doesn’t fear death. Instead, she says, if she dies after rescuing 30 or 60 girls, she believes her fight was worth it.

While working in brothels may be the scariest kind of labor girls face, millions of other Indian girls work in other areas: on farms and in the fields, in the crowded streets of big cities, in markets, and in private homes. Girls as young as six or seven work in indentured servitude. Like sisters Shweta and Shilpi profiled by Lisa Ling, these girls work 12- to 14-hour-days filled with backbreaking work—cooking, cleaning, and caring for children not much younger than themselves—and sometimes physical abuse as well.

Many employees of young girls actually believe they’re helping the girls by providing them with food and shelter—something they might not otherwise have. But many employees simply prefer providing girls, as they’re the cheapest source of labor available. No other group is so easily mentally and physically abused than young girls.

It’s a bleak picture, I know. Fortunately, groups like STOP and the South Asian Coalition Against Child Servitude, which runs a shelter an school for girls rescued from domestic work, are leading a courageous battle against the institutions that enslave girls.

And there are so many solutions to this problem. Obviously, education is the best way to protect girls from exploitation, ensure them a brighter future, and help them bring them families out of poverty. Getting girls in school, though, is an uphill battle against poverty in itself. As the mother of one young girl, who earns her family $2 a day by working as a merchant on a busy and polluted street, said, “If she is in school, what will she eat?”

It’s true that freeing girls form child labor is a tough battle to fight. But freedom and education are girls’ rights. In India, over ten laws ban or limit child labor; they need to be enforced. Moreover, the international community has a responsibility to meet the promises they’ve made to provide every child with an education.

At the end of the day, though, it comes down to the value we place on girls’ lives. What does it say about our world when thousands, even millions, of girls are sold into slavery for just $1? Aren’t girls’ lives worth more than that?

A note to readers: This is a difficult issue, but there are many great ways to help. Check out www.oxygen.com/icare to learn how you can support The Global Fund for Women and other organizations fighting for Indian girls. Most of all, make your voice heard (by, for example, writing a letter to Congress to tell them you support ALL girls' rights to freedom and education!).

Jailbird!

Yay! It's another day of witnessing the media get wrapped up in the inconsequential trivialities of an airhead celeb (if you guessed I was referring to Paris Hilton, you're right).

A Google News search today returned some 19,000 stories on Paris Hilton's release from an LA jail. Yes, folks, while millions of people around the world are starving to death, women's rights are under attack, global warming-induced climate change is taking the world by storm (no pun intended), and bloody wars keep killing more people, the media can't stop flipping out over a blond waif's little escapades!

As fellow New Moonie Crystal put it, "It's so annoying that [Paris] gets so much attention, and the real, valid, important things girls are doing in the world get overshadowed by her!" Thanks, Crystal--couldn't have said it better.

The media reports that Paris has now disappeared to "an undisclosed location" (hmmm...maybe she's picked up some tips from Cheney). Perhaps that's good for the rest of us, although we all know it's going to take a lot more than a few Paris Hiltons falling off the face of the planet for the mainstream media to start consistently paying attention to the REAL issues girls face. After all, when was the last time you saw real coverage of a topic like body image (not the fake celebrity stuff), racism against women of color, women's rights in places like Africa and Afghanistan, global issues like HIV/AIDS or female genital mutilation, or women in politics (not counting Hillary)?

Drop us a line at blog@newmoon.org and tell us what you want the media to be covering--and what you think of the Parisian shenanigans of late.