How I pull off working out several times per week

On May 9, 2017May 10, 2017 By scenebyginaIn New York, places, workLeave a comment

If you didn’t IG your gym visit, did you really go?

I happen to post my visits to the gym on social media as a way to keep myself accountable and to motivate myself. There are many who think it’s an absolutely obnoxious habit, and that’s perfectly OK and they’re more than welcome to mute, unfollow or unfriend me. Really, I don’t take offense at those things!

It also has prompted a few friends to ask me how I do it. How do I get away from my office to fit a class in? How do I have time to shower?

I’m going to answer all of that in this blog post.

Just like keeping a food diary (which I do on Weight Watchers’ website, as it’s the best system that works for me), tracking my workouts is a must. After xx (heh!) years on this earth, I know what works for my body. Right now, I’m in a great place. I have virtually zero aches and pains, I’m sleeping well, and my energy is high.

Screen Shot 2017-05-08 at 3.12.16 PM.png — What Weight Watchers tracking looks like.

I achieve this through eating well (real nourishment! Lots of colorful vegetables and mostly plant based proteins) throughout most of the week with a little indulgences on weekend, be it a glass (or a few!) of wine, a second helping of dinner or a snack, or dessert.

As for working out, I treat it as a commitment. I’m paying $70 a month for my gym plus other fees here and there for different yoga studios that I use. So I refuse to let that money go to waste. We all have periods when we slack off. Well, for me, it’s never the working out.

I enjoy working out and with a history of Parkinson’s in my family, I know it’s better for my health.

The challenge for me is with the food part. I’m a stress eater. While my dad was in and out of the hospital and nursing home, I put on weight because I was eating meals at the hospital or on the go. No matter if I’m making good choices, the way it works with my body is if I’m buying close to 100 percent of my meals, I put on weight.

I’m uncomfortable when I’m carrying an extra 10-15 pounds. I literally feel bad, so I usually hit the breaks when I can and work to get back on track.

Working out

I take 45-minute classes of cardio mixed with high intensity weight and plyometric training (“Sports Circuit,” “Total Body Conditioning,” “Burn,” or “Cardio Cross Training”) about three to four times a week, and hot power yoga (the Baron Baptiste style) about four to five times per week. On weekends, I tend to hike or walk an hour with the dog.

(The class in this video is a good example of what some of the classes are like. This instructor, Simon Lawson, was one of my favorites! He recently moved on to teach at the Fhitting Room.)

So how do I do this while balancing my job as a director of communications for a mid-size university in New York City? Truthfully: it takes a lot of planning but I admit I’m very fortunate:

I have a great job with a great boss and a great team. Communications work (public relations, social media and content news writing) is nonstop at my job, but we’re not a news media outlet that must push out news 24/7. We’re the public relations and marketing arm of the university. I have a wonderful staff that works hard, and a vice president who cares about work/life balance. While, for some, this means coming in early and leaving early to deal with children, for me, it means I gym during my lunch hour. A healthy staff is a happy staff!

So, I dip out for an hour to take a 45-minute gym class at New York Sports Clubs with a quick shower afterwards. I’m so glad my gym offers 45-minutes classes at 12:15p each day.

It helps that my gym is literally half a block away from my office. Like, no kidding, I can leave the office about 5 minutes before class starts (I change in my office before ducking out so all I have to do is walk into class and, ‘Go!’)
I take quick showers and get dressed quickly. I’m not one to wear makeup at work, so drying my [now shorter] hair is a cinch.
I often work after hours. I’ll go home after yoga, cook (cooking is key to how great I feel because I’m eating lots of greens and grains), and then hop back on email and Twitter to catch up with more work!
Important: FOOD PREP! No, I’m not the type to prep seven days of meals on a Sunday. But I do make egg or egg whites using a muffin tin on Sundays so my breakfast is taken care of. As for lunch, I prepare a hearty and healthy lunch by cooking it while I cook dinner. I’m talking lots of vegetables, a healthy grain like couscous, quinoa or brown rice, or a low-glycemic sweet potato & about four ounces of grilled chicken, tofu, or a half cup of legumes.
Having lunch ready means I don’t have to take a detour after the gym to buy lunch. The break room to nuke my lunch and I’m back in the office!
We depend heavily on Google calendar at work, so, for the most part, meetings are planned in the mornings or late afternoon. And when they have to cut into my midday gym time, that’s ok, too!

Screen Shot 2017-05-08 at 3.12.04 PM — Incentive for extra WW “points” = food

So … why the yoga?

The hot power yoga (which I take at this amazing studio called Lyons Den in TriBeCa) has been key to improving my flexibility and eliminating aches and pains. Before I started getting into yoga heavy, I was dealing with frequent headaches and a nagging tennis elbow situation. Ever since getting into Bikram Yoga, and now power yoga, most of those aches are gone. The heat loosens my muscles, improves my flexibility, and challenges my mental stamina, while the quick pace of power yoga works my muscles.

Since the schedule at “the den” is constant, I can go any time from right after work, to 8 p.m. at night.

Screen Shot 2017-05-09 at 3.21.09 PM

Bethany Lyons is the founder of Lyons Den. [Images via Lucky mag]

OK, but what about time for other commitments?

Alright. I’m not going to lie. My social life takes a hit when I’m this “on” with working out/eating well. I tend not to want to go out to eat or go out drinking after work. Both of those things mess with my sleep, which inevitably f*cks with my weight, so I try and avoid them depending on how things are going at work. Right now, we’re super busy, so the social activities can wait.

Truth is, I’ve always been more of a weekend warrior when it comes to going out. I need to have an alert mind at work, so going out and cutting loose is few and far between. But it’s ok.

One thing I’ve learned while battling restrictive eating and an eating disorder in my 20s was to rid myself of dichotomous thinking, meaning viewing things in black or white. So if I get invited to a string of events in the coming weeks (and it WILL happen), that’s OK if I miss some workouts. It’s all about balance, which is something many of us struggle with.

I’m grateful practicing yoga has helped me with that, too. Hopefully I’ve helped someone with this post!

Start-up culture:A Q&A w Milk Sugar’s Sam Dwyer

On March 2, 2017March 2, 2017 By scenebyginaIn New York, People, workLeave a comment

Screen Shot 2017-03-02 at 11.43.32 AM.png

I love milk and dairy products (cereal o’clock is one of my favorite late night habits), so I would be so upset if I were ever to become lactose intolerant. You can learn all about lactose intolerance, which basically forces some people to have to forgo most dairy here.

My mom suffers from this affliction and she has to spend close to $7 per gallon of Lactaid milk for her coffee. Well, now there’s a new product that claims to make your lactose intolerance a thing of the past.

Milk Sugar was invented by Brooklyn-based inventor Sam Dwyer. I talked to him about the product and what’s it’s like to invent a supplement! (You can buy Milk Sugar here.)

1) Why did you start Milk Sugar?

Lactose intolerance is something that for many people develops in early adulthood, after you’ve spent your whole life eating dairy. I am a young guy living in New York City — I love pizza! It was so frustrating to give up my favorite foods!

I eventually discovered that I could take Lactaid pills with dairy, but they never made me feel good, and my beloved jerk room mate would make fun of me for being “lactarded.” I wanted to understand more about my body, so I started researching what lactose intolerance is — and I learned that while 10% of people with Northern European ancestry have problems with dairy, as much as 60% of our diverse US population at large has problems. But all Americans love eating cheese; on average we eat 34 pounds of the stuff every year.

What I realized was that Lactaid medicalizes, and stigmatizes, a common condition. If you’re lactose intolerant, there’s actually nothing “wrong” with you: it’s normal. So with Milksugar I set out to do two things: create a normal lactase enzyme supplement pill for normal people, and then also to… let nature in.

What I mean by letting nature in, is that the psychology surrounding consumer products is tremendously important, because it effects how you understand yourself. The coolest thing, I think, about Milksugar is that the active lactase enzymes are derived from a cool Japanese fungus, koji, which in latin is called aspergillus oryzae. Koji is beloved in Japan, because it’s the secret ingredient for making sake and miso — it creates tons of enzymes, including the ones that break apart the dairy sugar, lactose, that gives us lactose intolerant people so much trouble!

I think that big corporations believe Americans are too wimpy to knowingly eat cool Japanese mushroom pills that help them digest dairy. I have a more optimistic view of my countrypeople: I think they will like to know! Because nature is really, really cool!!

2) What’s the best thing about being your own boss?

Well, I can sleep in and stuff. Also I can entertain myself with notions of earthly riches. I’m more inclined to think of myself as an entrepreneur than as a boss. It’s a distinction that makes a difference. I’m terribly impulsive; I don’t command myself, so much as I am drawn forward by curiosity and vision. In that way, I am a servant.

And that’s the best part — the freedom to pursue the dream!

3) What’s one of the hardest things?

Well, I’m not a rich kid, or in possession of vast savings, so there’s been some financially tight moments. How terrible — I have had to live off rice, and sometimes recycle my better-remunerated room mates cans for beer money. Oh, woe is me (I’m joking, although having money to go out is fun). It’s more seriously stressful to be late with the rent. Obviously, as a start up business with not too much sales volume yet I should worry about failure. But the truth is that I don’t.

In the back of my mind I have been preparing to do a project like this for awhile. I am very fortunate to have some truly amazing and inspiring friends, teachers, and investors who have walked similar paths. I wouldn’t be doing this without them.

The hardest task for me has been setting the correct expectations for myself, and remaining mindful. I can be very impatient, but changing the way an entire culture thinks about lactose intolerance won’t happen overnight.

That said, I think we can win.

Inspiration for your bedroom

On January 26, 2017January 26, 2017 By scenebyginaIn New York, places, workLeave a comment

… your bedroom style, that is! (Naughty, naughty!)

When it comes to interior decoration style, I’m basic at best. Clean lines, light colors, dark furniture. I would like to step it up someday, but I can admit it’s not my forte. I have two dear friends who kick ass in this department, especially when it comes to their bedroom style. Think fun colors and pretty scenes:

16252263_10100796550483595_5535182050390277166_o — Winter bedroom style by Michelle Christina Larsen.

The above winter wonderland bedroom is by Michelle Christina Larsen, a Brooklyn-based copywriter who specializes in fashion editorial writing and creator of Day Job Optional, a blog dedicated to helping writers launch & grow sustainable online careers. She has a fashion school background, but something tells me she’s been decorating like this since she was a kid. You can find more of her DIY style on her style blog, Hey Mishka.

15780816_10100778103316865_2614484399092073866_n — Working from home is a cinch when everything is pink. By Michelle Christina Larsen.

16105798_10100790464684585_7609718467571186533_n — Disco bathroom, anyone? By Michelle Christina Larsen.

My other bedroom style inspiration is Charly Carlyle (a moniker, obviously) who is a psychometrician in her daytime career, but blogs about sex positivity when she’s not measuring medical research. She is TRULY inspired by bright colors and girly things, but she has a penchant for skulls, too.

15974900_10206331212199176_3699920048695561413_o — Who wouldn’t want to sleep here? And maybe do other things. By Charly Carlyle.

11950403_10203487881197678_6896532003687651572_o — Work is fun when your work station is pretty. By Charly Carlyle.

15937213_10206291061675438_7788773113800353402_o — Another view of that pretty Charly Carlyle bedroom.

A well-being experiment: the Facebook-free summer.

On May 25, 2015May 25, 2015 By scenebyginaIn family, work1 Comment

Screen shot 2015-05-24 at 8.50.36 PM — The Facebook.

It was a long time coming: I’m taking a hiatus from Facebook.

There are plenty of reasons people announce (on Facebook, of course) that they are quitting. More often than not, they come back. And, there’s nothing wrong with that; It’s good to take breaks.

For me, this hiatus has nothing to do with those studies that say Facebook can cause depression, jealousy, and so on. It’s not over any relationship drama. I don’t use Facebook for that kind of thing, especially since that would require someone to have a dating life. Ha!

On the contrary, I happen to think it’s a brilliant way to communicate to a wide audience at once. I have lots of fun on Facebook, sharing funny, odd, or depressing news stories in order to engage my 1200+ Facebook “friends.” Not only do engaging debates break out on my Facebook profile, but the funny commentary often has me in tears … laughing.

But … I work in news and media relations. SO much of what I do is tied with constantly surfing the web, reading, and communicating: watching news trends, checking in with my ‘clients’ (faculty) and urging them to write OpEds or matching up their academic expertise to media outlets for commentary and interviews, then sharing these hits with various social media outlets. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

I’m always “on.” And I’m tired, especially with everything going on with my dad.

With the advent of the smartphone (the Blackberry was my first) years ago, it became clear that even though one wasn’t in the office, work could still get done. Emails could get answered first thing in the morning when I wake up, or at 1 a.m. in the morning, when I’m in a cab on my way to the next social event: Why not look at my phone and respond to that email, or surf Twitter for the latest breaking news? And with that news in hand, it’s only “my (self-imposed) duty” to share with my Facebook friends, right?

To put it simply: I’m burning out.

In addition to putting this sometimes undo pressure on myself to constantly communicate (sometimes necessary for work, but definitely NOT necessary to the point that others remind me [jokingly; I know] that I’ve missed a weird news story), it’s become a massive crutch when it comes to friendship.

Earlier I mentioned 1200+ “friends.” Let’s be realistic: I do not have that many friends. Some of these are networking acquaintances. Others were friends in high school and college who, these days, make me cringe with their racist, sexist, and misogynist, (yeah, I said it) statements on Facebook that it’s no wonder we do not hang out in person.

But among that list, are real friends who I have neglected because life gets in the way—and so does Facebook. Check out this excerpt from a Matthew Warner blog post that explains what I mean perfectly:

“When we see each other’s status updates every once in awhile, it gives us the illusion that we’ve “kept in touch” (even though most family and friends don’t see our updates — they aren’t on Facebook, don’t check regularly or missed it in their feed). It’s a poor substitute for meaningfully keeping in touch with our loved ones, but we compromise and settle for it anyway because it’s easy. When it comes to allocating how much energy we put into which relationships, it builds in a bias toward convenience vs importance. And, again, we end up doing so at the expense of time we should be spending on more personal interaction with our most important relationships.

“It’s made me into a lazy friend and loved one.”

So why not keep Facebook and just not log on and engage? Um, duh: I’m a communicating junkie; I can’t do that. (For more on that and other reasons to quit or take a real break from Facebook, check out “5 Things I Learned When I Quit Facebook” over at ABC.com.)

And why choose Facebook out of all the other social media? Well, I can’t quit Twitter: too much of the news world is there, so it comes with the career. And Instagram is easy: it’s just pictures. Since Facebook is more of a time suck, it’s the natural choice. And, remember, this is not a permanent thing. It’s simply a hiatus. An experiment, if you will.

The one worry I have on taking this break from Facebook is that it’s an excellent way to keep in touch with family and friends in other United States and overseas. This is especially crucial at a time when my father is in poor health and living at a nursing home since his hip fracture in late January. But I have to think of my well-being first. The less time on Facebook, the more time being present when I’m with my mom and dad. So, although it will take more effort, we’ll have to communicate via phone or email.

Sharing family news on Facebook: definitely one of the many reasons it's a great social media channel. — Sharing family news on Facebook: definitely one of the many reasons it’s a great social media channel.

So this is it: the hiatus is on, and so is the challenge: I feel the need to reconnect with people and return to my hobbies (writing about South American culture and music for Sounds and Colours) the good, old-fashioned way.

In the meantime, follow me on Twitter: @ginavergel7, Instagram: @ginavergel, and on this blog, of course!

Screen shot 2015-05-24 at 9.14.11 PM — Tweet, tweet!

Women Entrepreneurship Conference in New Jersey

On October 7, 2014 By scenebyginaIn Education, Uncategorized, workLeave a comment

A former assignment editor from my newspaper days is now a program manager at Montclair State University’s Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship and she’s asked me to share the following information for what seems like an excellent FREE event for the business-minded.

Women Entrepreneurship Conference
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Montclair State University
1 Normal Avenue (University Hall – Conference Center 7th Floor), Montclair, NJ
Sponsored by the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship

This daylong conference of high-energy inspiration and practical tips for entrepreneurial people. The event is for those who are looking to grow their own business, or start a new venture, or executives who want to be more entrepreneurial in their company. Students and wannabe entrepreneurs are welcome! And the event is FREE: (You should register here: http://bit.ly/1CQhr8L)

Confirmed speakers include:

Essence magazine’s Mikki Taylor, Catalyst’s Ilene H. Lang, NASDAQ OMX’s Ellyn McColgan, Golden Seeds’ Joan Zief, venture capitalist and former Time Inc. exec Fran Hauser, Tracye McDaniel of Choose NJ, Kathleen Coviello of NJ Economic Development Authority, Michelle Lee of Wells Fargo, networking guru Sally Glick, plus executives at companies ranging from startups to giants like Prudential and Horizon BCBSNJ.

Visit WomenEntrepreneurshipWeek.com for speaker bios.

Everyone is invited to join the conversation. Use #WEW on social media. Tag your posts with @FelicianoCenter on Twitter.

A brilliant Latina law scholar

On September 4, 2014September 4, 2014 By scenebyginaIn Education, New York, New York Times, People, workLeave a comment

Screen shot 2014-09-03 at 11.01.33 PM — Tanya Hernandez

I was writing to an editor at a magazine this evening about an opinion piece one of our law professors is going to write for them, and as I was going through her credentials, I thought, “She’s one brilliant Latina!”

An alumna of Brown University and Yale Law School, Tanya Hernandez is a professor of law at Fordham School of Law. Her expertise centers on discrimination; Latin America/Latin American law; and employment.

In 2013, she was selected by a Manhattan Federal Court judge to sit on a council that would weigh in and advise on New York City’s controversial Stop & Frisk policy.

She penned this opinion piece for the New York Times about civil rights: affirmative action, voter rights, and same sex marriage rights.

And in this piece she penned for the Huffington Post (before the Supreme Court ruled on Affirmative Action), she covered one of my favorite things to bring up when debating matters of race with friends: implicit bias.

The thing is, once I bring it up, it usually shuts the (Facebook) discussion down. The person feels I’ve insulted them, when in reality, I haven’t, because I’ve had implicit racial biases as well. We all have! And as Hernandez explains, they can be overcome:

As a decision is expected within the next two weeks, one thing I hope the Court will consider is that research in the field of cognitive psychology reveals that we all harbor biases and that affirmative action policies assist in addressing those biases.

Part of the reason for enduring social hierarchies is that individuals rely on stereotypes to process information and have biases that they don’t know they have. These implicit biases, as psychologists call them, are picked up over a lifetime, absorbed from our culture, and work automatically to color our perceptions and influence our choices.

Over a decade of testing with six million participants of the collaborative research venture between Harvard University, University of Virginia, and the University of Washington, called “Project Implicit,” demonstrates pervasive ongoing bias against non-Whites and lingering suspicion of Blacks in particular. Some 75 percent of Whites, Latinos, and Asians show a bias for Whites over Blacks. In addition, Blacks also show a preference for Whites.

In the educational context, studies of school teachers indicate that teachers generally hold differential expectations of students from different ethnic origins, and that implicit prejudiced attitudes were responsible for these differential expectations as well as the ethnic achievement gap in their classrooms. This is because teachers who hold negative prejudiced attitudes appear more predisposed to evaluate their ethnic minority students as being less intelligent and having less promising prospects for their school careers.

The pervasive existence of implicit bias in society and its manifestation in the educational setting, strongly suggests that the selection of students can be similarly affected by unexamined stereotypes and implicit biases. Bluntly stated university Admission Offices are not immune from the operation of implicit bias.

But we are not slaves to our implicit associations. The social science research indicates that biases can be overridden with concerted effort. Remaining alert to the existence of the bias and recognizing that it may intrude in an unwanted fashion into judgments and actions, can help to counter the influence of the bias. Instead of repressing one’s prejudices, if one openly acknowledges one’s biases, and directly challenges or refutes them, one can overcome them.

Read the rest of that piece here, and then check out this sampling of academic articles she’s written on a bevy of important topics:

Defending Affirmative Action: An International Legal Response, in vol. 29 Civil Rights Litigation and Attorney Fees Annual Handbook (eds. Steven Saltzman & Cheryl I. Harris 2013).
Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law and the New Civil Rights Response (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013) (https://sites.google.com/site/racisminlatamerica/)
HATE SPEECH AND THE LANGUAGE OF RACISM IN LATIN AMERICA: A LENS FOR RECONSIDERING GLOBAL HATE SPEECH RESTRICTIONS AND LEGISLATION MODELS, 32 U. Penn. J. Int’l Law 805-841 (2011) (http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1103&context=jil).
“What Not to Wear” — Race and Unwelcomeness in Sexual Harassment Law: The Story of Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, in Women and the Law Stories 277-306 (2010 Foundation Press book chapter, Elizabeth Schneider & Stephanie Wildman eds.).
Afro-Latin@s and the Latino Workplace, in The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States 520-526 (2010 Duke Univ. Press book chapter, Juan Flores & Miriam Jimenez Roman, eds.).
Latino Anti-Black Violence in Los Angeles: Not “Made in the USA,” 13 Harvard Journal African American Public Policy 37-40 (2007).
A Critical Race Feminism Empirical Research Project: Sexual Harassment & The Internal Complaints Black Box, 39 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1235-1303 (2006). Available online at: http://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/Vol39/vol39_no3.html.
Sex in the [Foreign] City: Commodification and the Female Sex Tourist, in Rethinking Commodification: Cases and Readings in Law and Culture 222-242 (Joan Williams & Martha Ertman eds., NYU Press 2005) (book chapter).
To Be Brown in Brazil: Education & Segregation Latin American Style, 29 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 683-717 (2004-05). Available online at:http://www.law.nyu.edu/journals/reviewoflawandsocialchange/issues/ECM_PRO_065694.

A word about demographics and missed opportunities

On September 5, 2013 By scenebyginaIn Colombia, Education, family, People, places, senior citizens, workLeave a comment

Screen shot by me. — Screen shot of the sad and lonely Spanish-language option by me.

I don’t purport to know very much about running a business. Aside from deciding whether I want to take on public relations work on a by-project basis, I’ve never run my own shop.

But I can safely say that Great American Opportunities, a fundraising corporation, has dropped the ball on an additional “opportunity” for their constituents to make more money.

Back in my day, for grammar schools to raise funds, students had to sell chocolates or Christmas wrapping paper. Today, with the power of the Internet, you can imagine those opportunities have become more diverse.

My cousin’s son’s school in Florida is raising funds by using Great American Opportunities to sell magazine subscriptions. It’s much simpler now. Parents forward a link and we help raise funds by shopping.

Or so I thought.

I’m in media relations. I don’t want for many magazine or newspaper subscriptions. I have plenty and they are all digital. So I figure, I’ll shop for my parents.

My folks are Colombian immigrants and American citizens who have been living in this country for more than 40 years. Yet Spanish is still their first and preferred [reading] language. They’re senior citizens, why wouldn’t they enjoy a subscription?

Sadly, the only Spanish-language magazine Great American Opportunities offers is People en Español. No offense to the celebrity magazine industry, but my parents have no interest in who J-Lo is dating. (Well, maybe if she finally moves UP in age of the person she’s dating. Just kidding!)

Has Great American Opportunities not looked into changing demographics of this country, especially in Florida? There are a TON of Hispanics/Latinos in the United States and they are a huge buying power. The more Latino-friendly products a business offers to the Latino community, the more they will buy. (Take a hint from the many corporations that advertise and offer circulars in Spanish.)

And that, mi amigos, in my opinion, is a missed opportunity for Great American Opportunities.

In case you’re wondering, I *did* buy a subscription to help my cousin’s son’s grammar school. I bought an interesting-looking health/neuroscience magazine, but certainly would have purchased much more had there been more than one entertainment-based, Spanish-language option.

Perhaps this is something Great American Opportunities can consider in the future. After all, many of Spanish-language readers and speakers are shopping in America!

Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS) Event on June 28

On June 17, 2013 By scenebyginaIn New York, People, workLeave a comment

Throughout my tenure here at Fordham University, I’ve learned about many great non profit and advocacy organizations in New York City. One such organization is the Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS), which serves girls and young women who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking.

GEMS, which has a relationship with Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service’s Institute of Women and Girls, was founded in 1998 by Rachel Lloyd, who had been sexually exploited as a teenager. GEMS has helped hundreds of young women and girls, ages 12–24, who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking to exit the commercial sex industry and to develop to their full potential.

Any notion I ever had about prostitution was completely changed one day when I covered a Fordham / GEMS event where a young girl talked about how an ex-boyfriend forced her into the lifestyle and GEMS helped her get out. It’s a form of human trafficking, though not in the traditional way people tend to think of trafficking in developing nations.

GEMS and Fordham’s Institute of Women and Girls are co-hosting an event called, “Before,” on June 28, from 6 to 8 p.m., at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. You can RSVP here.

“Before” is an evening of original monologues written by GEMS staff and fellows preformed at Fordham University’s Pope Auditorium. There will also be a survivor created art show and light refreshments.

For more information, visit GEMS website here.

BodyVOX! at Fordham

On May 9, 2013 By scenebyginaIn New York, People, workLeave a comment

Fordham University professor Aimee Lee Cox has organized an amazing program for young women!

BodyVOX is a performance activist piece that confronts the sexualization of girls, and represents a unique collaboration between students in her African American Studies class, theater majors, the viBe Theater Experience, and the national organization, SPARK Movement.

The original dance-theater-activist performance is written and performed collaboratively by young women. BodyVOX! explores the curvy lines between “sexy” and “sexualized,” and demands that we not just critique the media messages forcefed to girls but that we take action and ignite change.

Created in an express 4-week process, an intergenerational team of artists, dancers, writers, activists and performers use performance to share our creative strategies to end the sexualization of girls, a root cause of violence against women and girls.

Sunday May 12 at 7pm
Monday May 13 at 7pm
at the Veronica Lally Kehoe Studio Theatre
Fordham College at Lincoln Center
113 West 60th Street (at Columbus Ave.)
A,C,B,D,1 trains to Columbus Ave

*Special lobby installation created by FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture

FREE!

BodyVOX! is written & performed by: Amee, Courtney, Erica, Nicosie, Mia, Mia, Quien, Stephanie & Tanzina, with Emma, Nadia and Aja & the SPARKteam.

Directed by: Aimee Cox & Dana Edellis, BodyVOX! is a collaboration between The Department of African and African American Studies and the Theatre Program at Fordham University, viBe Theater Experience, and SPARK Movement.

Would you pay a higher price for ‘ethical’ clothing?

On May 1, 2013 By scenebyginaIn People, places, workLeave a comment

The horrific building collapse in Bangladesh has thrust ethics as is relates to lower priced clothing back into the spotlight. I’m glad NPR’s Morning Edition covered the topic. Here is an excerpt:

At the Joe Fresh store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, customers are bombarded with pastel polo shirts, button-down shirts and chino pants. On one shelf, you might find clothes made in Peru, Vietnam and China. Toward the back, there are piles and piles of shorts, just $19 each, and each made in Bangladesh.

Outside the store, Reene Schiaffo emerged with a bag full of Joe Fresh merchandise. She says she knew about the Bangladesh factory collapse but gives the company the benefit of the doubt.

“It didn’t affect my sale, because I know a lot of times these retailers don’t exactly know where the stuff is being made,” she says, “but they have to pay attention more because that’s not acceptable.”

Listen to the segment here.

Public Radio International’s (PRI) and WNYC’s The Takeaway also covered the topic. Novelist M.T. Anderson was a guest on the show and he made a comment that made me wonder. He said the dangerous working conditions in these factories are obvious–not only to the workers, but, to “those of us who in particular are demanding to have a pair of jeans for $15, as opposed to $16 and $17 dollars.”

But are those prices realistic?

I could be wrong (Please note: I am NOT a shop-o-holic), but I’ve never seen a pair of jeans made in America for anything less than $58. For instance, Glenn Beck’s “100% Made in America” jeans line, named 1791 Jeans, start at $129. His t-shirts start at $30.

Yes, it may be more ethical to shop 1791 Jeans, or Levi’s (also starting at about $129 in some cases), but is it realistic for everyone? I’m coming at this from a perspective of a child of immigrants who worked for low wages at factory jobs. (Never mind the $16 jeans. Most of the time, we wore hand-me-downs.)

Sometimes, it seems that many topics covered in the media are for those executives who own or invest in these (in this instance, garment) companies and the college graduates with white collar jobs (and salaries) who can afford to pay the “100% Made in America” prices.

How can those who would NEVER be able to buy a $129 pair of jeans being be more ethical? Has anyone considered that?

Scene By Gina

Category: work