In an alternate universe, these people are killing it.
*Travis is not a truck.
I got 99 problems, and Twitter spoilers are one.
I... no, I can't, but... OK, you win, you gorgeously terrifying man beast.
HBO
Oh, Gregor Clegane is in this episode? ::: puts pizza slice down :::
HBO
All men must die, but... THIS MAN?!
HBO
HBO
Warning: Side effects include a sudden urge to flex in front of every mirror you see.
Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed
Lower the weights slowly, let your elbows rest on the floor for one second, and then press up explosively.
Do 10 to 12 reps.
Lauren Zaser / BuzzFeed
No, seriously, he’s beyond cute.
LOOK AT THOSE BEAUTIFUL EYES.
Belly love.
True love <3.
Justin + Jessica forever.
50 mn Inside / Via laineygossip.com
Every morning, Mackensie fills in her eyebrows with eyeliner — the beginning and end of her daily makeup routine. It’s uncomplicated. Usually, it’s enough. But on this late Saturday afternoon, she’s gone unexpectedly HAM in a makeup store.
She tears polishes from a wall, painting every nail a different color. She angles to see herself in the corner of a mirror, wielding a flat Q-tip soaked in black liquid. After eyeliner, bronzer. After bronzer — two shades too dark — red, red lipstick.
“I look so different,” she says, gleeful and skittish.
The Lenox Square Mall Sephora can inspire this sort of behavior in the uninitiated. Mackensie explains that her trips there are usually limited to a few minutes, tagging along with people who know exactly what they want. She’s never actually tried stuff on.
“You could literally come here and do your whole makeup for your wedding!” she says. “I hope we don’t run into anyone I know.”
Suddenly she’s done. She looks at the mirror again, braces flashing, unruly curly hair piled into a bun that covers slivers of her bare scalp. She laughs, raising a pale hand to a much darker cheek. She does look different. She decides that feels good.
We visit two malls over two days, and Mackensie adores them both: the pristine tile, the organization, the food courts. Inside stores, she walks with one arm outstretched. She flattens her hands against Vera Bradley bags, drops Claire’s rings onto her small fingers. At Macy’s she clutches tops with phrases on them, reading each one out loud: “‘I’m actually really smart.’ That describes me! ... ‘To bae or nah to bae.’ I hate the word bae.” A boatneck shirt in purple ombre printed with two faded palm trees is “so Tumblr.” She says her ideal style is “schoolgirl chic.”
But the thing is, Mackensie never buys or even tries on anything. She hates spending money. When not bound to her school’s navy-polo, gray-skirt uniform, she wears old souvenir T-shirts with denim or stretchy black pants and sneakers. Her winter jacket is pink fleece. The mall never appeals to her functionally — it’s just a bounty of stuff to see and touch and imagine herself wearing.
Photo by Bryan Meltz for BuzzFeed News
When she was in fifth grade, Mackensie began pulling the hair from her eyebrows. They were thick, and she was self-conscious, so she used her fingers to thin them out. The summer before sixth grade, she began pulling from her scalp. A large bald spot formed on the back of her head, so over winter break, her dad cut off all of her hair. She started wearing a wig. By now — 10th grade — Mackensie’s wild, wiry curls have grown back, and she uses her bun or a hairpiece to hide her bald spots.
According to the national Trichotillomania Learning Center, 2-5% of the general public have the hair-pulling disorder. It’s a BFRB, or body-focused repetitive behavior. Another BFRB is skin-picking, which many people with trichotillomania — and 5% of the general public — also do.
Trichotillomania — trich (pronounced “trick”), for short — is listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but according to the TLC, the five criteria associated with the official diagnosis don’t always present themselves in every person with trich. You can feel pleasure or relief while pulling (one criteria), but not necessarily tension before you begin pulling (another criteria). Some don’t realize they’re pulling until another person points it out, or, as the TLC explains, until “he/she discovers of pile of hair, scratches on the skin, open scabs or bleeding fingers.” Examining the damage after a pull is often part of the process, which can mean anything from twirling a loose strand of hair around a finger, to, for some, tasting or swallowing it.
Some people with trichotillomania identify their behavior as self-harm. But the TLC says pulling isn’t like cutting — though people who suffer from BFRBs, including Mackensie, do often suffer from anxiety or depression, too.
While trich typically emerges in people between the ages of 11 and 13, experts have found that more women began pulling in puberty than men. This imbalance continues into adulthood, with women making up 80-90% of reported cases. A widely held theory is that men just don’t report trich as often as women — that shaving their heads can easily minimize the problem.
"It's an interesting question we talk about all the time," says Leslie Lee, TLC's program manager. "Because these are 'women's issues,' right? Hair and skin. I got an email the other day from a 22-year-old man who said, 'Do I have a women's problem?’”
When Mackensie pulls, she’s “looking for a coarse hair, kind of,” she says. “I don’t think it feels good necessarily ... Some people are like, ‘Oh, I love the feeling.’ I guess I do, but I started pulling from the wig too, so I guess just the feeling of getting rid of a hair, then playing with it and feeling it, which I really like.”
She’s tried different “fiddle toys” — like Koosh balls — but she says nothing provides her the same relief. She’s gone through four therapists, including her current beloved one, whom she sees once every other week. She’s tried hypnosis. She can’t recall all the drugs she’s been prescribed — among them Prozac and Naltrexone, often prescribed to recovering drug addicts or alcoholics. These methods and medications have helped others curb their trich, but Mackensie says she’s never been “pull-free” for more than two weeks.
Photo by Bryan Meltz for BuzzFeed News
Mackensie doesn’t have a job or an allowance, but she does make money. From September to January, she says, she collected about $200 through the Buckhead Exchange, a Facebook group for buying and selling in her affluent Atlanta neighborhood. There’s a group for teens, but Mackensie spends most of her time in the group for moms, who buy the childhood clothes and toys and books she lists for sale. She’s also obsessed with getting free products and gift cards and subscriptions through sites like icravefreebies.com — recently, she accidentally subscribed her white Jewish family to Essence.
Mackensie isn’t particularly interested in sports or the arts. Her short-lived stints in band playing the French horn and trumpet are spoken of with mock horror by her mom, who recalls spending one recital in the audience slunk low in her seat, hand over her eyes. But Mackensie has found her extracurricular joy as the varsity football mascot. She’s a lion, packing all her 5-foot enthusiasm into an overheated costume.
But the thing Mackensie really loves, more than malls and freebies and mascotting — miles ahead, in fact — is, and of course it is: One Direction.
On display in Mackensie’s room are three life-size cutouts of 1D members and north of 60 posters on her walls. She has One Direction–branded bracelets, books, Barbie dolls and figurines, socks (which she won’t wear because they’ll get dirty), pillowcases (which she won’t use because they might get lost or ruined in the wash), first-row ticket stubs, wrapping paper, balloons, and temporary tattoos. The worst question you could ask her is which member of 1D is her least favorite. Instead, she’ll diplomatically put them in order: Harry, Niall, Louis, and Liam. (Zayn was fifth even before he left the band.) Her love for them is unconditional and earnest.
“Sometimes I'll be pulling, and I'll think, Harry wouldn’t want you to do this, so I’ll stop for a few minutes,” she says. “A lot of people don’t understand that. I usually keep it to myself or tell my therapist. They’ve helped me a lot and that’s why I like them so much. My goal in life is to meet them and thank them. I know this sounds totally weird, but I want Harry to kiss my bald spot or something. I’m like, that’ll help me stop pulling.”
Taped to her bedside table is a list she made of reasons she doesn’t want trich, with entries like “eyebrow makeup sucks” and “hair piece is annoying.” But also: “Harry would be proud (heart emoji).”
“I have a theory,” Mackensie says about the reminders. “Once you've had trich for a long time, you get so far and deep into it that it's, like, taken over you — you feel like there's no help and that nothing you can do will help it. And you get brainwashed, in a way, into thinking that you like having it and that you don’t want to stop. So I'm kind of in that hole right now.”
Photo by Bryan Meltz for BuzzFeed News
To know Mackensie is to know she loves attention. She’ll remind you of this, too, whenever she says something particularly spotlight-hungry (like “I love the spotlight"). It's simple: Attention, she says, makes her happy, and she's channeled that into a one-woman trichotillomania-awareness campaign.
Last fall, she emailed several media organizations, including BuzzFeed, introducing herself as a 15-year-old from Atlanta. It worked; over the next four months, Mackensie appeared on the websites of MTV, Gurl, and Cosmopolitan, and in J-14's iconic congested pages, talking about her experiences with trich.
On Twitter, Mackensie routinely tweets at reporters and searches for the word "trichotillomania," sending strangers who tweet about their disorder links to TLC's website and stories about her. She urged the combined 5,600 followers of her One Direction fan Twitter and Instagram accounts to buy the J-14 that featured her. She doubles these efforts on her Facebook page. She used to have a Tumblr, until the mother of a girl at her school saw it and contacted the school. It was “just a hipster Tumblr” with about 3,100 followers, Mackensie says — she learned basic HTML so she could customize her page. But there was also an “about me” section that described trich and her past experiences with depression and cutting. The title of the blog was Sugar-Coated Whore.
The school contacted Mackensie's mom, who made Mackensie shut it down. "She didn't know it was that bad," Mackensie says. "I was really upset. It was good to let out my feelings, because I learned through the trich community that it's good to share your story."
That's not to say Mackensie's family isn't supportive — their two-story brick home in Buckhead is warm and silly, particularly when Mackensie's younger sister, 13-year-old Reagan, is around. It's just that raising a kid with trich has been hard. What do you do when your fifth-grader comes home with no eyebrows because she tore them all out?
"As a parent, I was literally like, I want to die," Mackensie's mom, Faryl, says, driving to pick Mackensie up from school one day.
Faryl is an accountant. Mackensie's father, Kevin, is an ophthalmologist. When Mackensie began pulling, they understood it was a medical issue — not all parents do. That didn't make it any easier; this wasn't a rough two-week adjustment period. When Mackensie relapsed in seventh grade, pulling out every last eyebrow hair, her parents rushed home early from one of Reagan’s soccer games. For a long time, Faryl says, she and Kevin would wake up in the morning thinking, "Another shitty day!" They became the self-described hair police, busting into Mackensie’s room to see if she was pulling, telling her to put a hat or gloves on.
"That's the worst thing to do, but you can't help it,” Faryl says.
Cutting off her hair entirely was a big, messy decision — Kevin and Mackensie were on board, but Faryl was resistant. It ended up being a turning point, though. It helped them get past the shock — to realize Mackensie could only stop on her own.
"You feel bad about it,” Faryl says. “But it was just easier to look at."
Photo by Bryan Meltz for BuzzFeed News
The social event of the year for freshmen and sophomores at the tony Lovett School in Atlanta is the pre-debutante cotillion, or PDC, a version of Sadie Hawkins with upper-crust rules. Before girls can invite boys, they must first be invited by a hosting committee. There is a required manners class — for girls only. If a girl wants to attend as a sophomore, she has to have attended as a freshman. This year, Mackensie went with a football player; she asked him with a note written on a $1 football from Target.
Mackensie's classmates have known about her trichotillomania since the sixth grade, when Mackensie gave her blessing to the PE teacher to explain the disorder to the class. She isn't ostracized for it; open bullying isn’t tolerated at Lovett. But that doesn't mean Lovett is paradise, socially. Once last year, the administration called an emergency assembly after Yik Yak — an anonymous social network, incidentally co-founded by a Lovett alum — had been flooded with vile messages about students and faculty members.
"Everyone says Lovett isn't cliquey, but it is," Mackensie says.
Photo courtesy of Mackensie
"Lovett is SO cliquey," her friend Josephine chimes in. It's Friday night, and the girls are out to dinner at Flip, a burger bar that calls itself a boutique. Josephine is outspoken like Mackensie, but in a more grown-up way — where Mackensie has unfiltered enthusiasm, Josephine plays it cool. Mackensie says she doesn't spend much time thinking about her generation, while Josephine can go off about Vine and people her age not being able to carry on conversations with adults. Their worlds within school are different, too. Mackensie worries most about keeping up good grades. Josephine worries most about being able to stand up for herself.
"Like, if someone disagrees with or a good amount of people disagree with you, being able to not give in just to be like them and to have their acceptance,” Josephine explains. “A lot of my guy friends drink, and I don't want to.”
"I'm, like, out of the loop," Mackensie says. "I didn't even know that was going on."
"Oh, yeah. Silly boy stuff," Josephine replies. She has a boyfriend who she's gone to two PDC dances with now. Mackensie says she doesn't like anyone right now — and she's fine with that. Her PDC date was just a friend; she spent slow dances asking what he thought of the Spanish exam.
Before leaving the restaurant, they pose for a photo that will later become one of the thousands Mackensie has uploaded to Facebook. It’s been hard for Mackensie to find a group of friends in high school. She knows she tends to over-apply the term "best friend."
"A best friend invites you over to places,” she explains. “I don't really get invited places much."
Photo by Bryan Meltz for BuzzFeed News
Mackensie has a new psychiatrist — Dr. Eric Fier, an animated, comradely doctor with an exceptionally hip office in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward. During Mackensie’s second appointment, the doctor spends about an hour alone with her before bringing in Faryl. All together now, they talk about whether there have been any obvious differences in Mackensie’s pulling.
“As Mackensie will tell you,” Dr. Fier says, “she's not going to really stop until she makes a commitment to stop … And she's not there.”
“You’re not at that point?” Faryl turns to Mackensie.
“I don’t know!” Mackensie says.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Dr. Fier asks.
Mackensie goes into her theory about trich and brainwashing.
“So, she has a relationship with trich,” Dr. Fier says, facing Faryl now. “Trich really is a relationship. It's like any addiction, whether it's drinking, whether it's coming home and smoking some weed, whether it's pulling your hair when you're stressed out. And like many relationships, you know, it's got certain elements about it that, even though you know we're not going to stay together forever — this isn't really a good long-term relationship, I'm not sure that I like myself most when I’m in this relationship — it still sometimes feels pretty good, and it is pretty familiar, and the thought of stepping out of this relationship and just trying to see who I am without being in this relationship is a little bit scary.
“I have this conversation with kids all day long,” Dr. Fier continues. “I asked Mackensie straight out, ‘At what point in time, what day, what month, what year, what age, do you think you're ready to stop trichin'?’ She said, ‘I'm not sure yet.’”
“[My therapist] and I are working on that, trying to get to that feeling,” Mackensie says.
The focus of their work, the doctor says, should be getting her anxiety down, but also nudging Mackensie out of her familiar world, building her confidence through new friendships and interests outside trich.
“I just don't want you to think that what stands between her and stopping trich is magic or anything. Mackensie is what stands between Mackensie and stopping trich.”
Later, in the waiting room while her mom schedules her next appointment, Mackensie admits this stressed her out.
“I don’t really want to do new things,” she says, solemnly — unusual for her. “I’m happy where I am. I just don’t want it to influence my parents so that they completely change, like, how they do everything.”
Photo by Bryan Meltz for BuzzFeed News
via on BuzzFeed
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
One Monday in September on a busy street in New York, my girlfriend and I fought loudly about how little I had eaten that day.
My younger brother had just visited me for a long weekend; we’d eaten our way through the boroughs like royalty. Still full of barbecue and Cuban food, I skipped breakfast the Monday he left and allotted 200 calories for lunch.
The plan derailed when my girlfriend Kaitlyn came by my office and suggested we grab a bite. When I placed my order at the soup and sandwich restaurant, she caught me.
"That's not even 300 calories," she said as we waited to pay. "That's not a meal."
"It's full of vegetables," I said. "I eat it all the time."
"That doesn't make it a meal."
We sat down at a wobbly laminated table, surrounded by hurried office workers on their lunch breaks. I tried to pretend nothing was up as I watched her shoulders clench. Had I done something wrong? Is there something bad about eating a light lunch after a gluttonous weekend?
"Camille," she said. "Say something."
"I'm going to eat the whole thing,” I said. “I have it all the time."
She packed up her untouched sandwich and walked out, tears brimming. I chased her outside.
"You always do this," she said. "You know exactly what it is you’re doing, but you refuse to believe there's a way out. "
We had never talked in public about my trouble with eating, and I was hyperaware of how many people shuffled around us, swinging in and out of the Starbucks next door.
“What do you want me to do, go back in and order something else?"
"That would be a great start, yeah."
I glanced back inside the restaurant. My legs locked. The pressure in my chest threatened to pop. 200 calories for lunch. I promised.
"I'll eat more later," I said. "It's not a big deal."
“You don't even think about what effect this has on me and everyone else in your life,” Kaitlyn said, raising her voice and locking her eyes on mine — both scolding me and scared for me. “It's not all about you."
Guilt rolled down my cheeks. She was right and she was wrong. I did think about the toll I was taking on her — maybe even too often — and so I pushed back.
"Don't tell me that I don't think about how this affects you," I said. "I hate myself for it, and I wonder if you’d be better off if I let you find someone else."
Her shoulders dropped and she let herself exhale. Her anger quieted now that I’d said out loud that I was just as scared as she was.
I shut up and she hugged me. Lower Manhattan carried on around us, but we stood on the sidewalk oblivious to honking cars and sweaty excuse-mes and falafel sizzling on the cart outside the restaurant. I hoped none of my co-workers would walk by. If they did, my head was buried too deep into her shoulder to notice.
We held on to each other and prayed to nobody in particular that I could break this — that it wouldn't break us.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
I have always been obsessed with scales, BMIs, calories, and nutrition facts; they were the only tools I had to document changes in my body as a teenager before I had settled into my adult shape and size. Nutrition by number has always made sense, so I didn’t notice when, after moving to New York City for my first job two years ago, those numbers started to dictate my days again.
It is offensively easy to count calories in New York. Chain restaurants are required to post caloric content on their menus. Gym culture is inescapable. Over the tops of cubicles, I heard co-workers chatting about their fitness accomplishments. The city that never sleeps never stops running.
I nursed my infatuation with counting at the office, where snacking between meals kept my spirits down and my numbers up. One day, I unstuck a yellow Post-It note and wrote in thick Sharpie, “LTH>LTF.” A little too hungry is better than a little too full. I kept it in a desk drawer for inspiration. After I cut out snacks, I started cutting out meals.
In an office where everyone misses lunch sometimes, nobody noticed. With no room for a table or even a couch in my tiny apartment, I ate all my meals alone in bed. Kaitlyn and I were still dating long-distance at the time, and texting each other during dinner wasn’t the same as having her next to me, preparing full portions of a meal we’d lovingly cooked together.
Instead, with nobody sitting at my side, I ate as little as I wanted, proud as I'd ever been of my self-discipline. This was the biggest self-improvement project I had ever taken on, even if I didn’t have an exact end goal in mind. I wanted full control over what I put in my body.
Objectively, there is nothing wrong with knowing how many calories you take in. Balancing meals and physical activity is doctor-recommended. We wear bracelets and program our phones to remind us to put down that soda or push through that extra mile. So when I organized my every day around netting as few calories as possible, I didn't think of it as an eating disorder. I thought of it as math.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
Distorted body image takes on a tricky dynamic in a relationship between two women. For every unkind thought you've ever had about yourself, it's likely she's told herself the same. When you restrict and exercise and count, count, count, it's because of the same societal forces that have inflicted both of you — inflicted all women, equally and indiscriminately.
Of the "big four" health concerns lesbians are disproportionately prone to — smoking, drinking, breast cancer, and obesity — obesity has been of particular interest to researchers lately. A survey from 2013 has affirmed that while lesbians and bisexual women skew heavier than straight women, they're also less concerned about being overweight. One possible, pleasing explanation is that queer women tend not to care about fitting the standard of "beauty" perpetuated by — and designed to please — straight men.
I’ve long identified as bisexual, and even though I’m now in an amazing relationship with another woman, I can't fully relate to this hypothesis. The last time I stopped eating, I was pursuing a man who ran half marathons, climbed mountains, and dated a gaggle of beautiful women with delicate waists and legs like lightning rods. Now he was gone, and I had Kaitlyn, and I couldn’t care less whether men liked how I looked. I should have been immune to this illness — this contagion so often shaped by patriarchy’s impossible demands of women. I didn’t believe I was sick because this wasn’t my disease to have.
A woman I love loves me for me, I thought to myself every night on the subway home. Why do I care about looking like what men want?
Last May, I weighed less than I had as a sophomore in high school. I was coming up on my one-year anniversary in New York, work was stressful, my then-roommate and I were on shaky terms, and I had all but stopped eating.
At the end of the month, Kaitlyn would be moving from Chicago to New York to move in with me, a certified big step. It was a convenient coincidence that my attachment to counting calories reached its peak just before this major life change.
After a year of long distance, Kaitlyn and I were both eager for our new life to start. She knew I’d been having trouble with my body — she commented that I looked thinner on each of our visits — but we didn’t see each other often enough for her to get a clear image of how calculated my eating rituals had become.
Even though living together sounded like a dream, I couldn't let go of the fear that my strict schedule would unravel. I wouldn't have time for two-hour nightly workouts, and she would see what I ate or didn’t eat. Presented with the option of healing with the girl I loved by my side, I was shamefully afraid of giving up my comfortable, controlled routine.
I brainstormed ways to keep it up under our shared roof: I could lie about my lunches, do push-ups at the office, or even start purging. I could make it work.
Or I could let it go, break up with counting, and nurture my healthy relationship with the girl I loved. But I couldn't do both.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
When moving day came, my parents and Kaitlyn's made the trip north to lend a hand. They were an immense help, but by the last day everyone was sick of everyone else; shuttling a U-Haul around Manhattan in June will do that to you. My patience broke when we all went out to dinner that night.
The house was a mess, we had so much more to do, and my family was fighting at the restaurant, so I took charge of myself the only way I knew how. In the middle of the meal, I escaped to the bathroom to cry and quietly pronounced myself un-hungry when I got back to the table. It was immature, but it gave me back some control amid all the frantic energy.
When we got home (sans parents) and I confessed that I was hungry, Kaitlyn didn't shame me for skipping dinner or tell me I'd brought it on myself. Instead, she made us a plate of cheese and crackers to share and then produced a box of Trader Joe's cookies from one of her suitcases.
I was shaken from fighting and embarrassed to stray from my conviction not to eat, but this space felt safer than the public display of a restaurant; it was not quite a haven where calorie counts no longer applied, but a transitional place where I could remember what it felt like to eat for pleasure again. I still felt vulnerable, my throat raw and lumpy as I swallowed bite after bite — but I chose to eat, just like I'd chosen not to an hour before.
Eventually, though my road to body self-care was studded with disagreements and occasional interventions from Kaitlyn, I reached a place where I could focus less on undoing damage and more on taking proactive steps. I started eating breakfast again. I ordered a subscription of boxed healthy snacks to my office and let myself have one every other day. I quit the gym, kicking and screaming. I talked about food in therapy and cried on the bus home.
Even with Kaitlyn next to me now, cheerleading and coaching and sometimes doling out necessary tough love, letting go of my decade-long yearning for physical perfection is not an easy task. Because it doesn't actually matter what men want; it's about a universal, inhuman ideal of female beauty, a sublime goal that lingers no matter who you date. The standards are set. The damage is done.
But even if I can’t upend the norms by myself, I can challenge them — by loving a body that the magazines I grew up reading say is not good enough, and by letting someone else love it too.
When old bad habits tempt me, I remember that first night Kaitlyn and I spent alone, after our parents had gone and the furniture was built. To wash down the Trader Joe’s cookies, we opened a bottle of champagne and ordered in cheesecake and watched Netflix all night. For the first time in a year, I didn't check the label to see how many calories I was taking in. In that moment, it didn't matter. I could be myself in this body, in this house, with this woman.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
Recovery isn't a flipped light switch. It's a dimmer that hums even at its lowest setting. After half a year, many sessions of therapy, and a few loud fights, I ripped the Post-It note in my office drawer into Scrabble tiles. I joined a new, smaller gym, where I’ve learned to exercise responsibly. My therapist suggested I never weigh myself again. Body self-consciousness is not a spirit that lifts out of you and never comes back, so I'm preparing for it to come and go, while I collect habits to help me muffle numbers that never stop shouting.
Making peace with food has been a shared experience. Kaitlyn and I cook together, go out for drinks, do yoga occasionally, watch Food Network constantly. Food, as it turns out, is a huge part of our relationship. Therapy and common sense remind me to get better not because it makes someone else's life easier, but because I owe it to myself. While I’m working toward loving my body on my own behalf, for its protection, its strength, and its power, it would be dishonest to say Kaitlyn’s validation doesn’t make a difference. She fills in the gaps.
Not long ago, I came home from the gym giddy after a milestone and played a joke on her.
"Guess how many calories I burned on the elliptical?" I asked.
I heard her breath catch. "I don't know."
"I don't know, either. I turned that function off today. First time ever."
Kaitlyn beamed and hugged me and told me she was proud. We opened a couple of beers, made dinner, and the hum softened.
via on BuzzFeed
Khalil realised he was gay at 17.
It was 1984, and he was living on a council estate in West London with his parents and two sisters, who originally came from Pakistan. “We had some family guests over,” he recalls, “and they brought along their daughter, who was around my age. My father kept making all these jokes about us getting married… and I knew he was joking, but I was trying not to cringe. I wasn’t attracted to her at all, and I realised at that moment that I hadn’t been attracted to any of the girls that had come over before.”
Seven years later, Khalil got married to the same woman, and they currently live in a well-to-do suburb of London along with their two children. However, he admits that despite having “the ideal life of a Muslim man” on the surface, he does not feel attracted to his wife.
When we meet near his office, Khalil (who has, along with the other interviewees in this article, asked for BuzzFeed News to use a pseudonym) is dressed in a pristine pinstriped business suit, and sports a medium-sized, perfectly trimmed beard. He greets me with a firm handshake – "Salaamwualaikum" – and apologises for being late, telling me that he needed to pray first.
Thinkstock
We’re later joined by two other men, Adnan and Mohammed, both of whom are in similar situations. Adnan, is tall, skinny and dressed in a plain suit. He's been married for just under two years, having had a ceremony arranged by his parents. Mohammed, who is short but well built, is dressed in the traditional Islamic thoba – a garment he says he usually wears in public. He’s a university student who hopes to be married soon.
The men head to an Italian restaurant in central London. Khalil booked a corner table weeks in advance: he highly recommends the food, and says that these types of venues are much better for such meetings, because of the nature of their discussions. "You don't really want to be talking about these things in a Muslim restaurant," he jokes. Adnan, relaxed in his chair, laughs with him, while Mohammed, who shows some nervousness, hunches over his phone.
After a small amount of short talk over olives, in which they talk about their jobs – and, more importantly, last week's football matches – Khalil asks how Adnan and Mohammed have been "managing" since the last dinner.
Although the men acknowledge they have same-sex inclinations, they are reluctant to identify themselves as "gay". However, they say that as Muslims who are "devout", they have dedicated themselves to strengthening their imaan [religious belief] in an attempt to overcome them.
In some British Muslim communities, homosexuality can be a controversial issue: some believe the act counts as a form of "zina" – an Arabic term referring to "unlawful" sexual activity.
Many imams were uncomfortable talking to BuzzFeed News about the issue on record, although one scholar, who wished not to be named, said that homosexuality was a “cardinal sin” in most strands of Islamic thought. He emphasised that the same view was held in most world religions, including Christianity and Judaism.
Dan Kitwood / Getty
Others imams, such as Ghulam Rasool of Leicester central mosque, said that Islam did not make a direct reference to homosexuality, but instead prohibited areas of sexual activity deemed impermissible, such as anal sex. He adds that the regulations apply to everyone, including those in heterosexual relationships.
“To have the inclination has never been condemned,” he said. “It’s acting upon it."
He added: “Whatever thoughts prevail for your mind, if you don’t act on the bad impulses you have to learn how to deal with them as a Muslim. And if you can’t, it's about where that sin fits in the Islamic spectrum.”
Rasool adds that similar rulings on sexual activity are evident in all branches of the Abrahamic faiths – but points out that in Islam, sexual habits have always been a "private issue".
There is still little information on how many gay Muslims are living in Britain – not least because many (especially regular worshippers such as the members of the support group) remain closeted, out of fear of reprisal from conservative elements of their communities.
As a result, some Muslim activist organisations, such as the LGBT support group Imaan (which is not affiliated with the men interviewed in this article), have articulated the need for British Islamic communities to be more open to such Muslims.
The organisation also said it does not support or encourage LGBT Muslims to enter "marriages of convenience," or pursue treatments that require one's sexual identity to be repressed.
Although Imaan usually works with LGBT Muslims who are "being pressured into heterosexual marriages", its spokesperson, Naeem (who preferred not to give his surname), told BuzzFeed News that it had heard of some cases where religious individuals were willing to repress their sexuality.
"The LGBT Muslim community in Britain is as diverse as the wider Muslim community here," he said.
"We come from various ethnic and sectarian backgrounds and each would have inherited their community’s attitudes towards Muslims of other ethnic or sectarian communities."
Naeem emphasised that the experiences of LGBT Muslims are unique and that they shouldn't be treated as a single group. However, he added that many are reluctant to talk about sexuality out of fear they "might dishonour their families, be forced into marriage as a form of rehabilitation, or become unwelcome in their communities".
In some cases, he says that people have suffered "intense emotional, psychological, and spiritual trauma" as a result of familial pressure to marry the opposite sex.
However, the men believe that common assumptions about homosexuality in Islam have been misinterpreted.
“It’s not homosexuality itself that’s a sin,” Adnan says. “It’s more about acting on your sexual urges – I think that’s been really misunderstood by the media, so they make out that Islam is homophobic, or anti-gay or whatever. It’s not, it’s just about controlling things that are haram [forbidden].”
Mohammed agrees. Although he realised he was gay in secondary school, and says he’s had “quite a few flings” with men in his early years at university, it was only a couple of years ago that he decided to devote himself to his faith.
“There was always a part of me that said what I was doing – going to clubs, having boyfriends – was wrong, but I tried to block it out," he says. "It was only when my mum passed away that I began really taking Islam seriously, when I realised we will all eventually return to Allah to be questioned about our evils.”
“The imam said that this was just a challenge in my life – so the only way to overcome it would be by devoting myself more to God. I was recommended to fast at least once a week, to be more devout in my prayers – and to get married. The imam had told me he knew many men who had felt these ‘natural emotions’, and were able to overcome them by living a good, Islamic way of life.”
Thinkstock
Mohammed describes the group as the first “safe space” where he was comfortable talking about his past activities. “No one judged me for my past," he says. “They were very open about their experiences, and how they returned to Islam. Usually, people would post a motivational image with verses of the Qu’ran on them, mainly about Allah forgiving you for your sins. And it was nice to be in a place where there were brothers to support you – it’s not often you find [something] like that in a masjid [mosque].”
Mohammed adds that the most common advice to Muslims in the forum – especially young people – is to get married. “Most of the brothers in the group recommend nikah [marriage] to overcome sexual urges,” he says.
“It’s not just for gay or lesbian people – Islamically we’re taught to regulate our sinful desires, like having sex out of marriage. Nikah isn’t just sexual, it’s also a way to come closer to Allah and please him.”
He cites a number of men he knows through the forum who claim to have “overcome their sexual feelings’ toward men” by marrying “practising sisters”, although he admits that they don’t really talk about the more intimate parts of their relationships.
Rob Stothard / Getty
“It’s not just religion – it’s more to do with culture,” he insists. “Islam doesn’t shy away from talking about dealing with homosexual feelings and transgressions. It offers the best solution for overcoming these feelings. But if you bring it up outside the mosque it is dangerous, and I think that keeps many gay and lesbian Muslims from coming out.”
When asked how his family would react if he came out, he says: “They’d definitely be very shocked to say the least – I’d be quite worried to find out. I’ve heard about gay Muslims who have come out and have lost contact with all their family, kids and friends.”
Adnan also keeps his sexual past a secret from his wife, although he says that it “isn’t much different” from the experiences of other Asian Britons.
“I don’t really know many Asians generally who are open about their sexual history, gay or not. It’s not something we really talk about in our culture, so in some ways it’s actually much easier,” he says. “It helps that I was always quite religious. I wasn’t very outward about my sexual preferences, and was only in one, very short relationship when I was younger.”
Adnan says he’s “working hard to build a strong relationship” with his wife, and believes that “if Allah wills, our relationship will blossom when we are graced with children”. However, he’s reluctant to answer questions on whether he has felt sexual attraction to other men since he’s been married. “I’m just trying to live my life as Islamically as possible,” he says.
Dan Kitwood / Getty
While Khalil, Adnan and Mohammed have not resorted to drastic measures in their attempts to overcome their sexual inclinations, they do say that others in the group have done. They recall one man in America who went to a spiritual healer, believing that his sexual inclinations were the result of an evil spirit known as a "djinn". Others have allegedly embraced full abstinence or sought help through gay conversion therapy (which has been condemned by the medical and mental health sectors in both the UK and US as damaging and ineffective).
“A lot of the time Muslims with these feelings want to follow the "sirat al Mustaqeem" [the right path] but they don’t know how," he says. "They’re lost. So they go to people who say they can cure them, and a lot of the time they don’t! I’ve heard stories where con artists have ripped people off pretending they can cure them of illness, diseases, and it’s just a con.”
He adds: “It’s much better to seek proper solution. I’d recommend any Muslim brother or sister feeling these emotions to go to their Imam or a respected scholar first... then seek devout brothers and sisters online for guidance.”
While this view might be controversial, the men say it is becoming the “normal opinion” of most devout British Muslims trying to understand their faith in the context of a sexually liberal society.
“It is quite sad to see some Muslims being abused by their families and communities just because they are gay,” Adnan says, recalling a former friend who was kicked out of his family home after coming out to his family.
Khalil says that while he would ideally want gay Muslims to “return to the right form of Islam”, it was “unacceptable” for anyone to be abused because of their personal qualities: “Doesn’t matter if you’re gay, straight, black, white or whatever, abuse is abuse, whatever the circumstance.”
And although none of the men have ever heard an imam publicly condemn gays or gay activity, Mohammed says that he still feels uncomfortable whenever his friends make “crude jokes” about gay people.
As we finish, the men exchange salaams outside the restaurant, and reaffirm the need to “get in touch any time” if they need to.
“Oh no, I better head back before it gets too late,” Khalil jokes. “My wife will think I’m having an affair!”
To contact Imaan, visit its website or email info@imaan.org.uk
CORRECTION: This story has been edited to clarify that the none of the interviewees are affiliated with Imaan. Additionally, Imaan neither supports or endorses the decisions made by the interviewees. (20/04/15)
via on BuzzFeed
Can I LIVE without all these delicious foods???
Ummm... can I not?
Bravo Networks
How am I going to live without gluten and onion and lentils and apples and garlic and soft cheese and milk and pears CAN I LIVE LITERALLY CAN I LIVE OMG.
Dimension Films
Bravo Networks
Bravo Networks
Traffic is up, speeds are down.
But Federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull insists his pared back NBN isn't to blame for slower speeds.
Speaking at the CommsDay conference in Sydney today, Mr Turnbull insisted the blame for any slower speeds doesn't lay with the 'last mile' of his fibre to the node (FTTN) National Broadband Network.
New Line Cinema / Via giphy.com
"The launch of Netflix once again provided a soapbox for those who claim only fibre to the premises will unlock the benefits of the digital age. What a pity the facts don't support their contention," Mr Turnbull said.
The Communications Minister placed the onus back on the big internet service providers such as Telstra, Optus and iiNet.
"In an FTTN network the customer has a dedicated copper line from the node. From the node to the Point of Interconnection customers' traffic will travel over a shared fibre channel. Contention on that shared channel is possible but much less likely than the most common source of contention which is in the transit or backhaul network from the PoI," he said.
"In a world where ISPs will compete on price and service, the far more likely choke points for services such as Netflix will be in the backhaul network and the choices retailers make... That has certainly been Netflix's experience in the United States," he said.
Getty Images
iiNet Chief Technology Officer Mark Dioguardi also addressed the CommsDay summit this morning, admitting that Netflix's launch has had a huge effect on the ISP.
Mr Dioguardi revealed Netflix now accounts for 25% of iiNet's total traffic, up from just 3% before it officially launched down under in March.
Earlier this month, Fairfax reported that iiNet users were experiencing slower services during peak periods in the evening, likely as a result of the launch of Netflix.
iiNet's network services manager, Roger Yerramsetti, posted on tech forum Whirlpool earlier this month, admitting the ISP had some issues.
In some areas we’re seeing network traffic reach levels that were projected to occur well over 6 months from now, so under the bonnet we have been rapidly upgrading our network to keep pace with the demand and to ensure we’re continuing to provide a high quality service," he said.
BuzzFeed News has contacted Netflix for comment.
Jonathan Nackstrand / Getty Images
Like many concert promoters, Sascha Guttfreund, 25, has a gift for managing egos. His job is catering to young rappers, mostly — J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Big Sean, Chance the Rapper; stars of the genre still hurtling toward a peak — but his schmooze mode doesn’t have an off switch. In mid-March, inside an uncharitably small black Kia on a warm Wednesday in Austin, Guttfreund, who is about 6'3" and built like a college linebacker, indulged a chatty Uber driver who happened to overhear what he does for a living. “What’s the deal with Iggy Azalea canceling her North American tour?” asked the driver, a self-described Slacker Radio junkie with Costanza-pattern baldness and a five-o’clock shadow. For reasons unknown, he used the exaggerated vocal inflections of a drive-time radio DJ. “Why is Lil Wayne suing Birdman for millions of dollars?” he asked later, as a follow-up.
Guttfreund parried both questions with admirable sincerity, offering up a number of reasonable and informed theories as if a better use for his time had never occurred to him. “You ask great fucking questions, bro,” he said with gusto. That’s another thing you learn quickly about Guttfreund. He calls everyone — even people he has just met — “bro” or “brother.” To interact with him is to be unwittingly adopted into an ever-extending family.
Guttfreund lives in Austin with his business partner (and, for the last three years, romantic one) Claire Bogle, also 25, with whom he owns a house near the city’s idyllic Barton Creek. Together, they own 100% of ScoreMore, a boutique promotions company that operates in markets across Texas and Louisiana. In the world of concert tours, promoters are like matchmakers, pairing artists of differing scales with suitable venues in a given market. A good promoter knows the ins and outs of her market better than an agent or manager parachuting in from out of town, and maintains smooth relationships with a variety of desirable venues. As touring has remained one of the few consistently growing sectors of the music industry in the 21st century, promoting has become a crucial and lucrative business. The world’s largest promotions company, Live Nation Entertainment, which creates tours for A-listers like U2, Madonna, and Lil Wayne, raked in $4.7 billion in concert revenue just last year.
If Live Nation is Chipotle, ScoreMore is like an over-performing taco truck. The six-year-old company, founded before either Guttfreund or Bogle could legally enter most clubs, now has seven full-time employees, plus dozens more street-level promoters on contract in each of the cities where it operates. It promotes about 150 shows per year, most in underserved markets at venues with capacities ranging from 100 all the way to 6,000 people, and takes an industry standard 15% cut of ticket sales, plus bar returns, after artist fees and expenses. Since it started in 2009, the company has also launched two festivals — JMBLYA in Dallas and New Braunfels, and Neon Desert in El Paso — and seen 22x revenue growth, bringing in just shy of eight figures last year. Its fast rise, based largely on super-serving markets that bigger companies have overlooked, has made it a paragon of the new decentralized music industry.
Those who have worked with ScoreMore say the keys to its success have been identifying promising talent at an early stage, and going above and beyond to keep its clients happy. It promoted some of J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar’s first shows in the South — before either artist had a record deal — and both have remained loyal to the company, even as they’ve gone from the mixtape circuit to the top of the Billboard 200. “Of all the promoters I deal with across the country,” one hip-hop agent told me, “no one has a better relationship with artists than Sascha and his team.”
Back in the black Kia, Guttfreund and Bogle are discussing a small clan of young women in halter tops and minuscule denim shorts walking along the sidewalk. Each wears an array of colorful plastic wristbands stacked from wrist to elbow as in a ring toss. It’s the middle of SXSW — Austin’s annual 10-day music, film, and interactive conference — and the city is overrun by variously credentialed music lovers and industry flacks hoping to rub shoulders with artists at lavish showcases that run day and night. “They’re trying to get chose,” Bogle concludes dryly.
The chatty driver is taking us to St. Elmo Soundstage on Austin’s south side, about five miles away from the central hub of downtown. Starting tomorrow, it will be the site of the Illmore, ScoreMore’s five-year-old SXSW party thrown in conjunction with the hip-hop blog IllRoots, on which both companies have staked their name. Among hip-hop fans in the know, the Illmore is often discussed in near-mythical terms — a hyper-exclusive after-hours pop-up soiree with a reputation for attracting the who’s who of the genre’s new vanguard. Not officially sanctioned by SXSW, the Illmore is like an underground postscript to the conference, usually stretching from 11 p.m to as late as 6 a.m. Performances at the parties, which are somewhat improvised, are always a strictly protected secret and never announced beforehand. Illmore alumni to date include many of the biggest names in hip-hop and dance music: Lil Wayne, Skrillex, A$AP Rocky, Kendrick Lamar, Steve Aoki, Lil Jon, Big Sean, Diplo, Macklemore, and Kid Cudi.
Since it started in 2011, the Illmore has grown from a passion project into ScoreMore’s most high-profile event of the calendar year — the calling card on which it telegraphs its ambitions and growing cachet. At SXSW, where the world’s biggest brands go to farcical lengths in pursuit of buzz, the Illmore is a genuine phenomenon. On the day before this year’s event, a record 22,000 people have RSVP’d online for a chance to gain entry (compare that to the total number of official registrants to SXSW Music this year: 30,000), with fewer than 1,000 slots available for each of three planned nights. When the official Illmore Twitter account announced guaranteed three-night access, +1, to the first person to get a tattoo of the party’s logo, multiple submissions beamed in within 90 minutes.
En Route to St. Elmo, Guttfreund and Bogle take a call with VFiles, the avant-garde New York fashion boutique and amorphous lifestyle collective, which is hoping to become one of the Illmore’s sponsors this year. A regal blonde in black Audrey Hepburn sunglasses, smoky eyeshadow, and white high-top Vans, Bogle seems more weary than enthused by the call. She leans her head out of the window and smokes compulsively from a vanilla marshmallow vape pen. It’s a cherished vice. Neither she nor Guttfreund drink or take drugs.
Major brands like Beats by Dre, Red Bull, and Bud Light — all jockeying to siphon street cred from a ready-made reservoir — have already signed on to help foot the bill for the Illmore, which, unlike a ScoreMore concert, is invite-only and generates no ticket sales or other revenue. With building costs, security, stage, lights, sound, porta-potties, and insurance, among a long list of other line items, the party costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce.
Guttfreund has a round, boyish face and permanent puffy bags under his eyes that give him the impression of a teenager who missed curfew by six hours. He’s a gleeful negotiator with the useful ability to make you feel like he has nothing but your best interests in mind, even when he’s shutting you down. On the call with VFiles, a representative for the company starts pressing for backstage access in order to film interviews with Illmore guests. Guttfreund’s response is gentle but relentless.
“I just wanna make it clear, Jake,” he says, using the rep’s first name. “The whole reason why the Illmore exists is for artists to get away from everything feeling like a media tent. We’re where they can go without having cameras in their face, so doing interviews and stuff would actually be the opposite of the vibe we’re looking to establish. We’ve gotta be strict when it comes to maintaining the integrity of the vibe.”
After a few moments, Jake seems to have gotten the message. “No, no need to apologize, bro,” Guttfreund tells him.
Claire Bogle and Sascha Guttfreund at the ScoreMore office in Austin.
Photo by Drew Anthony Smith for BuzzFeed News
In 2007, Guttfreund was a freshman at the University of Texas with no particular ambitions in the music industry. He majored in communications and paid his tuition by selling ads in newspapers, or cable door-to-door, or working as a waiter in a ranch-themed steakhouse. He had a reputation around campus for throwing parties — a skill that mostly served to support his fondness for illicit substances, especially weed, and alcohol, with which he first became acquainted at 15. Hip-hop was a passion. “It was conducive to the lifestyle I was living,” he says now. And in 2008 he decided to try his hand at throwing shows, instead of parties, for which he could sell tickets to students like himself. One of the first was with Afroman, a one-hit wonder whose 2000 song “Because I Got High” has had an enduring appeal among stoners.
Bogle, a New Mexico native who grew up preferring Tupac to bows and barbies, came on board shortly after the Afroman show. At the time, she was taking music business classes at Austin Community College and met Guttfreund through his roommate. ScoreMore grew by recruiting an army of like-minded students who were as proficient at selling tickets on Facebook and Twitter as they were on the street.
A half white, half El Salvadorian son of filmmakers from L.A., Guttfreund found that he could gain the trust of his favorite developing rappers by leveling with them, rather than posturing. Instead of promising more money than other promoters, he promised a better experience, and an opportunity to take their music to new horizons. It helped that he was a true believer — an enthusiastic champion and ally — and Wiz Khalifa and Wale signed up with ScoreMore early on. “I never pretended to be something I’m not,” Guttfreund says. “I’m not a gangster or anything, just a kid who loves the culture.”
It wasn’t all smooth sailing. Even as the business was taking off, partying as an occupational hazard was taking a toll. At 20, Guttfreund’s drinking had begun to consume him, and in three separate incidents in February 2009 he was arrested on campus, woke up in a hospital, and came to in his apartment missing his two front teeth — with a gash in his jaw — and no memory of what had happened to him. After a few false starts, he got sober in October of that year. “I just couldn’t live my life that way anymore,” he says now. Bogle, whose father was an alcoholic, followed two years later. She was 22.
“I was really good at getting fucked up and I wasn’t happy,” she says. “I used drugs and alcohol to escape life, rather than enhance it. I didn’t like the person I was. So yes, going sober was a choice, but it was a choice I knew that I had to make. It was, Do you want to be happy? Or not?”
Turning down a desolate, tree-lined road off the highway, we finally arrive at St. Elmo, a sprawling, hangar-like compound with metal siding in an anonymous, grey-blue business park at the end of a long driveway. Compared to the bustle of downtown or the east side, the location is utterly remote — the kind of place where Walter White from Breaking Bad might set up a clandestine meth lab. Guttfreund, cell phone still on his ear, gives me the grand tour.
The first Illmore was in 2011 and took place at a modernist glass and concrete mansion in Rollingwood, a well-manicured sliver of Austin’s hilly west side. Guttfreund and Bogle teamed up with Mike Waxx, then an 18-year-old blogging prodigy who had launched IllRoots four years prior, to rent out the house as a sort of crash pad for their mutual industry friends visiting from L.A. and New York. The living room and backyard pool were converted into ad hoc performance areas, and Mac Miller, Big Sean, The Cool Kids, Khalifa, and Kid Cudi stopped by as both performers and guests. If SXSW had become a circus with brands and media herding artists at the crack of a whip, the Illmore was conceived as the opposite — an off-the-grid no-spin zone where performers and their publics could have organic interactions. “It’s where artists can be fans,” Guttfreund likes to say.
The inaugural Illmore was a smash — and then some. Several days of partying left the mansion nearly destroyed, resulting in $30,000 worth of damage that the undergraduate organizers struggled for months to repay. The dilemma has shaped their thinking ever since: how to arrange for the ingredients of any great party — spontaneity, atmosphere, and a lack of inhibition — in a way that’s sustainable rather than self-destructive?
Last year was the first time the Illmore didn’t take place at a house, descending instead on the Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex, a 55,000-square-foot events center with a bowling alley and a skating rink. The extra space solved the event’s ballooning capacity needs, but many complained that the magic of the old house parties — the all-important “vibe” factor — had been lost in the expansion. During his performance that year, A$AP Rocky felt compelled to raise the ghost of Illmores past, addressing the crowd to challenge the palpable sentiment that the party just “ain’t the same.”
Though he’s reluctant to admit it, Guttfreund knows that the pressure on this year’s Illmore is higher than it’s ever been. He can’t have a repeat of last year, which he acknowledges may have been too big and felt too much like a traditional concert. More than a party, the Illmore is a critical forum for fortifying relationships with existing clients, and a demo tape that helps drum up new ones. A flop would be an embarrassing and costly ding to his reputation. In the music industry, any misstep can turn today’s wunderkind into yesterday’s news.
Sascha Guttfreund at the ScoreMore office in Austin, TX.
Photo by Drew Anthony Smith for BuzzFeed News
via on BuzzFeed
