America's Next Transgender Top Model?

Is America ready for a transgender height model?
(ABC News)More Photos

Tyra Banks seems to imagine so -- or at least, she seems to think that a transgender model ought to be able to strut, pose and vogue alongside distaff hopefuls in a tender to prove she's the next grown thing.

Banks' show "America's Next Top Model" will debut Isis, its first transgendered contestant, when it begins its 11th season Sept. 3. It's a progressive move for a network reality series, but pushing the envelope, in the modeling realm and on TV, has become the MO of "ANTM": The show has cast multiple gay contestants, and net season crowned a plus-size model as its winner.

"We want to redefine what beauty is," said executive director producer Ken Mok. "You can be tall, you can be short, you can be plus size, you backside be transgendered; you don't have to be what the modelling industry says you experience to be. That was one of Tyra's original missions."

Mok and Banks didn't set out searching for a transgender model for "ANTM's" eleventh season, in which 14 wannabe catwalkers vie for a contract with Cover Girl cosmetics and mental representation by Elite Model Management. They establish Isis, 22, when she was surviving in a homeless shelter "ANTM" visited last time of year for a photo shoot that paired contestants with disadvantaged girls.

"She participated in the inject and we didn't have it off anything around her," Mok said. "But when we started reviewing the photos, the girl that unbroken popping out of the background was Isis. She really knew what she was doing. Tyra wanted to have it off who she was. It was clear she real had a passion for modeling. So when it came to casting this season, we said, 'Why don't we find that girl?'"

A Jewel in the Rough

Leggy and lean, Isis looks wish she commode strut with the best of them. Still physically male, Isis is rescue money to afford a sex change operation, Mok said.

She's non the kickoff transgender person to break into the modeling world: In the '80s, Teri Toye and Billy Beyond modeled for Chanel and Todd Oldham, respectively. Model-turned-pop singer Amanda Lear built her life history in the 1970s on keeping her sex position ambiguous. (Word on the street was she was born a man.)

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Washington Post Examines Effect Of Fertility Treatments On African Women

�The Washington Post on Thursday examined the gist that prolificacy treatments in Africa are having on a growing number of middle family women world Health Organization are shunned by smart set because of their infertility. According to the Post, the stigma of infertility on the continent a great deal forces women into closing off, and it is "so severe that it a great deal drives women -- and men -- to suicide."

In the past few years, several fertility clinics have opened across Africa, including in Kenya and Uganda. The Post reports that the clinics offer an alternative to superstitious explanations of infertility and "dubious" advice from some traditional healers. Fertility physicians also ar revealing an "uncomfortable verity about a condition about always blasted on women: that at least half the time, the problem is with the man."

Annie Akatabaazi, wHO helps run a clinic in Uganda that treats thousands of women per annum, said, "The number of clients is going up by the day. Some ask to come at night, so they'll not be seen. Some call whispering. Sometimes they don't want to give you their name. They come saying, 'My husband is going to leave me if I don't hold children.' And the men, erst they notice out, they come every day. If they bear an appointment at 9 a.m., they picture up at 8" a.m.

According to the Post, the "deeply entrenched" culture of large families in Africa is related to economics. Children interpret financial security, particularly in societies that do not receive assistance from governments, the Post reports. Children are expected to provide for their parents when they get older, and they often protect women against a divorce system that typically grants prop to men. "In the African common sense, children ar an investment," Robinah Kaitiritimba -- a health guardianship advocate in Kampala, Uganda -- said.

The Post as well profiled Betty Apio, a Ugandan woman who has been unable to have children because of a botched abortion (McCrummen, Washington Post, 8/14).


Reprinted with kind permission from hTTP://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can scene the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email pitch here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a absolve service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.


� 2008 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.




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Download Grooverider

Artist: Grooverider: mp3 download    Genre(s):  Drum & Bass     Discography:      The Harder They Come    Year: 2002    Tracks: 15 Hardcore/drum'n'bass DJ and producer Grooverider has over the age go near synonymous with the London drum'n'bass setting. A DJ for over a x spinning everything from soul-jazz and acid-house to hip-hop and hardcore breakbeat, "Grooverider the Hardcore Provider," as he's come to be known, has followed the development of drum'n'bass up from its earlier roots in breakbeat techno and felicitous hard-core on through to contemporaneous styles such as ambient and techstep. A residing DJ at some of London's biggest-name clubs (including Rage and his have long-running, extremely lauded Metalheadz dark at Blue Note), Grooverider's influence, not solely on the reasoned but similarly the politics and ideology of jungle, is believably rivaled alone by Goldie's (and then with not near the flamboyance). A DJ since his former teens, Rider (born Roger Bingham) spun everything from acid out of work words and deep house with the South London Sound System and pirate station FAZE FM sooner landing spot a residence with Rage, an foundation of early-'90s hardcore thrown under the umbrella of London's biggest weekly, Heaven. Fired from an apprenticeship in accounting when he couldn't make it jibe with nights out spinning 'til 4 a.m., Grooverider went full-time with DJing when he was hired on at Rage, and began producing music curtly after. Rider recorded his first base tracks (as Codename John) for his fresh launched Prototype label in belated 1993, at the height of the reign of ragga and jump-up. Fusing breakbeat with elements of rave, blistering, and techno, Grooverider's approach on tracks such as "Dreams of Heaven" and "Deep Inside" pushed for a crossing over of jungle's to the highest degree important historic constituents -- hardstep, darkside, and the music's hardcore yesteryear -- an approach path presently popularized by supposed "techstep" artists such as Origin Unknown, Ed Rush, and Boymerang. In metre, Prototype would go synonymous with futuristic dancefloor drum'n'bass that notwithstanding refuses the conservativism most frequently associated with the dancefloor. Early releases on the label include Ed Rush's "Kilimanjaro," "Door" by Dillinja's Cybotron fancy, and Boymerang's monolithic "Still" (tracks from these releases all appear on Prototype's kickoff uncut release, The Prototype Years). Grooverider signed a non-exclusive recording parcel out with Sony underling Higher Ground in 1996 -- The Prototype Years was the kickoff fruit of that, followed in 1998 by his proper solo debut Mysteries of Funk. Prototype remains active as well.

Futurebound and Jaquan Feat Ca

   
Artist: Futurebound and Jaquan Feat Ca

   Genre(s): 
Drum & Bass
   

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Discography:


   
 Maximum Boost (MB012)

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 2

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Mary-Sherman Willis' "The Laughter of Women"

SIFF schedule

At one point in "Theatre of War," a revealing documentary about the 2006 New York staging of Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children," Meryl Streep informs us that we don't really want to know too much about the process of preparation for a role. To outsiders, she says, it can just look like "bad acting." It's like showing off the plumbing in a new house; you might be proud of it, and you're certainly glad it works, but it's not something you'd want to advertise. Sorry, Meryl, but in this movie watching "the process" seems pretty interesting, especially when playwright Tony Kushner, actor Kevin Kline and Brecht's daughter pop in for a comment or two. Acting students won't want to miss this one. It plays tonight and Thursday at SIFF Cinema.

John Hartl,

Special to The Seattle Times

Today's schedule

Egyptian

3:30 p.m. — "Games of Love & Chance"

6 p.m. — "The Secret of the Grain"

9:30 p.m. — "Lady Jane"

Harvard Exit

4:30 p.m. — "Combalimon"

6:45 p.m. — "Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go"

9:15 p.m. — "The End"

Moore Theatre

7 p.m. — "In the Land of the Head Hunters"

Pacific Place Cinema

4:30 p.m. — "XXY"

7 p.m. — "The Island of Lost Souls"

9:15 p.m. — "Postcards From Leningrad"

SIFF Cinema

4:30 p.m. — "Under the Bombs"

7 p.m. — "Theatre of War"

9:30 p.m. — "Stranded: I've Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains"

Uptown

4:30 p.m. — "Princess of the Sun"

7 p.m. — "Days and Clouds"

9:30 p.m. — "Still Orangutans"

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Lily Allen - Allen Denies Simons Reunion

LILY ALLEN has dismissed speculation she has reconciled with her ex-boyfriend ED SIMONS - insisting she is not "some failed baby machine trying to win my man back".

The couple split earlier this year (08) shortly after the Smile singer suffered a miscarriage and lost the pair's baby.

Allen fuelled speculation she had got back together with the Chemical Brothers star after they were photographed having lunch together earlier this week (beg19May08).

But Allen, 23, has blasted the claims - insisting she has maintained a friendly relationship with her former lover - and criticised the press for running false stories.

She writes on her MySpace internet page, "I went for lunch with my ex-boyfriend yesterday. Lunch. I am not some failed baby making machine desperately to trying to win my man back.

"Sometimes I think these journalists are still living in the 1950s. No one knows anything about my relationships. Ed and I are friends, who went for lunch yesterday, that's it."

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Burden Of Grief

   
Artist: Burden Of Grief

   Genre(s): 
Metal: Death,Black
   

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Discography:


   
 On Darker Trails

   Year: 2001   
Tracks: 9


   
 Haunting Requiems

   Year: 2000   
Tracks: 11

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Known for their love of amphetamine-like intensity and high-velocity bombast, Burden of Grief is a German metallic element band that believes in expiration for the jugular vein. Some people bear characterized their blistery put to work as "melodic death metal," a term that has been applied to Scandinavian bands like At the Gates, In Flames, and Age of Ruin. But Burden of Grief don't really sound like the Nordic bands that are considered melodious death metal and/or symphonic shameful alloy. Instead, Burden of Grief -- whose albums are best described as a combination of decease metallic element and thrash alloy with power metal references -- get most of their inspiration from American and British bands, and those bands reach from the seminal Slayer to Megadeth to Iron Maiden (although Burden of Grief more often than not party favour a harsher and quicker approach than Maiden and other old school exponent metallic element outfits).


Encumbrance of Grief were formed in Kassel, Germany, during the summer of 1994, when lead singer Mike Huhmann got together with drummer Christoph Schellöh and iI guitarists: Oliver Eikenberg (world Health Organization stuck about until 2001) and Philipp Hanfland. For their first few months, Burden of Grief didn't possess a bassist, merely that changed when bassist Ulrich Busch came on board in late 2004 -- and with that five-man batting order in seat, Burden of Grief recorded their first demonstration cassette, A Duet of Thoughts, in 1996. More demos followed, including Above Twilight Wings in 1997 and Eternal Solar Eclipse in 1999. It was too in 1999 that the German headbangers signed with a small independent label called Grind Syndicate Media, which digitally remastered their 1997 and 1999 demo/promotional recordings (including a cover of the Iron Maiden favorite "Stalker") and combined them as a full-length record album coroneted Haunting Requiems in 2000. Subsequent Burden of Grief discs included the album On Darker Trails (released on Massacre Records in 2001) and their tierce official full-length album, W. C. Fields of Salvation, a 2003 recording that was released by Remedy Records in Europe in 2004 (the yr of the band's tenth anniversary) earlier approaching out on Magick/Cleopatra in the United States in 2005.


During their first 11 years, Burden of Grief weren't virtually as often of a revolving door as some decease metallic element and shameful alloy bands can be -- there have been cases of uttermost metal bands going through 12 bassists or ten or more drummers in the course of action of a few months. Nonetheless, Burden of Grief possess had some batting order changes from time to metre. Their lineup was fairly stable until 1999, when drummer Schellöh was replaced by Christian Nürnberg (world Health Organization terminated up having to leave because of military responsibility and was replaced by Carsten Schmerer -- the someone wHO had produced the Eternal Solar Eclipse demo). In 2005, Burden of Grief's five-man lineup included foundation members Huhmann and Hanfland as well as Schmerer, Ulrich Busch (wHO had switched from sea bass to guitar in 2001), and bassist Dirk Bulmahn (a 2001 arrival).