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mariacallous · 1 month

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On March 5, Haiti’s acting prime minister took off on a chartered Gulfstream jet from a New Jersey airport with nowhere to go.

Ariel Henry—Haiti’s unelected leader since July 2021—had spent weeks traveling in Africa and the Americas trying to rally international support for his country, which has been mired in chronic poverty, political instability, and an insurgency of criminal groups led by a former Haitian police officer turned gang leader, Jimmy Chérizier, known as “Barbecue.”

While Henry was out of the country, Barbecue and his allies coordinated an armed assault calling for Henry’s ouster. They stormed police stations and prisons, released around 3,700 inmates, and attacked the airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, making it too dangerous for Henry to land there.

Instead, Henry tried to negotiate a plan to land in neighboring Dominican Republic, but he was rebuffed at the last minute by the government there, according to U.S. officials, Caribbean officials, and regional experts familiar with the matter. Other Caribbean countries reacted coolly to the prospect of hosting Henry as his support domestically and abroad began collapsing. Finally, he landed in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, where he remained in limbo until March 12, when he announced his intention to resign.

The chaos and uncertainty of Henry’s final flight as prime minister underlined the political tumult that has gripped Haiti—and the tepid response to Haiti’s downward spiral by an overstretched international community reluctant to tackle yet another crisis.

If Haiti isn’t yet formally deemed a failed state, it’s well on its way. Government institutions and basic services have broken down and gang violence has sparked one of the worst humanitarian and refugee crises in the Western Hemisphere.

“It’s an extremely dangerous situation,” said Bocchit Edmond, Haiti’s former foreign minister who now runs the Haitian Observatory of International Relations think tank. “Without a change, we are facing a possibility of an entire nation becoming a big open-air jail run by gangs.”

Yet what that change should look like—and who might be willing and able to step in to make it happen—remains as unclear now as it has for more than two years.

Haiti’s near collapse has led to frantic meetings among regional leaders in recent weeks and heated debates between the Biden administration and Congress over what role, if any, the United States should play in the unfolding emergency in its own backyard. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Jamaica on Monday to meet with Caribbean leaders on the issue, and he pledged an additional $100 million in U.S. funds to finance the deployment of a multinational force to help stabilize the country.

The Biden administration is urging Congress to unlock even more funds. Two powerful Republican lawmakers—Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee—argue that the administration doesn’t have adequate plans for how it would use those funds. They also charge that the administration let its Haiti policy fester in indecision for too long, exacerbating the country’s current predicament.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has faced chronic instability for decades, fueled in part by devastating natural disasters and international aid mishaps, including a U.N. mission that brought a deadly cholera outbreak to the country as well as sexual exploitation and abuse of women and children by U.N. peacekeepers, and a 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000, followed by bungled international relief efforts that sparked a cycle of mismanagement and stunted development projects.

In 2021, then-President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated by a group of gunmen in his home, sparking the current political crisis in the country. (A Haitian judge last month indicted three prominent individuals—Moïse’s widow, an ex-prime minister, and a former Haitian chief of police—for involvement in the assassination, charges they have denied as baseless political reprisals.) Henry took over as acting president shortly after and soon began pleading with foreign powers for a military intervention to address the country’s spiraling instability.

Gangs have taken control of much of Port-au-Prince, and rights groups say the gangs have used rape and torture as weapons against the civilian population. Thousands of Haitians have been killed and kidnapped.

“It is difficult to overstate the gravity of the political, security, human rights and humanitarian situation in Haiti today,” the U.N. mission in Haiti wrote in a report to the U.N. Security Council in January, a copy of which was obtained by Foreign Policy. The violence has led to a surge in Haitians fleeing the country; the report noted that the number of Haitians fleeing to Central America with the aim of making it across the U.S. southern border increased 23-fold in 2023—from 1,550 people in July to 35,500 people in October.

The U.S. Embassy in Haiti this week evacuated some diplomats and nonessential personnel as well as deployed a specialized detachment of U.S. Marines to bolster the embassy’s security. Gen. Laura Richardson, commander of U.S. Southern Command, told lawmakers in a hearing on Thursday that the U.S. military had plans ready to evacuate U.S. citizens if the crisis worsened.

“It’s absolute chaos. People are crying out for even some basic level of security,” said Nicole Widdersheim, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “We need to see the international community doing something very rapid to bring security and stability and protection from the violence.”

The international community, meanwhile, procrastinated on the matter for over two years, officials and experts said.

After Moïse’s assassination, the United States balked at the prospect of leading a multinational force. In 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden privately asked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if Canada would take the lead, current and former officials said. Canada declined, but it offered to contribute $100 million to help fund such a force. No other country in South or Central America stepped up. Haiti, coordinating with the Biden administration, then turned to Africa. Kenya agreed to lead a mission and deploy 1,000 police officers to Haiti as part of an effort that would be coordinated and bankrolled mostly by the United States.

That plan stalled when Kenyan opposition politicians challenged the program’s legality. The U.S. government, meanwhile, already overstretched by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, let Haiti fall by the wayside, current and former U.S. officials told Foreign Policy. Biden didn’t nominate a U.S. ambassador to Haiti until May 2023, nearly two years after Moïse’s assassination. Biden’s nominee, career diplomat Dennis Hankins, was confirmed to the post by the U.S. Senate on Thursday.

“A lot of countries at the beginning were reluctant to take the lead, though Haiti needs urgent help,” Edmond said. But, he added, “At the end of the day, we also need to take our own responsibilities for our own country. I don’t think I will throw the blame only on the international community.”

Henry’s resignation announcement was quietly seen as a relief by some U.S. and regional officials, but it also created new challenges as the region tries to cobble together a temporary governance structure from afar to lead Haiti out of its crisis.

His announcement came after quiet pressure from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), officials said, as well as repeated threats from gang leaders should he return to the country. (The White House has denied reports that it also pressured Henry to resign.)

Now, CARICOM is helping craft a new presidential transitional council composed of seven voting members and two observers, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by Foreign Policy. Candidates for the council would be put forward by at least five active Haitian political parties with input from CARICOM-screened civil society organizations. Once appointed, the new council, in theory, would help restore legitimacy to Haiti’s absent government and lead the country on a path toward stability and, eventually, elections. Henry has said he’ll officially step down once the new council is in place.

Almost immediately, though, current and former officials said, those efforts hit a wall as Haitian elites began wrangling with CARICOM officials over who should make the final cut, and some potential member candidates voiced fear for their families’ lives if they joined the council. On Friday, Blinken said that most of the parties have named their representatives for the council but that several still have not.

Edmond said many Haitians are skeptical of the plan and “don’t believe it’s the right solution.” Edmond said he believes a better alternative would be for the Haitian Supreme Court to take temporary control and appoint a technocrat as prime minister to strengthen Haiti’s national police forces and lead the country into elections.

Meanwhile, Henry’s resignation has put on hold the U.S.- and U.N.-backed plan for Kenya to deploy a police force to Haiti to help restore order to the country. Kenyan President William Ruto said he remained committed to the plan but that it would only occur after the transitional council was established. It’s unclear whether Henry’s resignation will create new legal hurdles for Ruto to carry out the deployment.

Biden administration officials also considered offers from Senegal and Rwanda to lead the security assistance force, but those proposals were ultimately rejected in favor of Kenya, current and former U.S. and Haitian officials said. Rwanda faces widespread criticisms over its checkered record on human rights and authoritarian bent, and Senegal is currently mired in its own political crisis over delayed elections. However, Kenya’s police have also been accused of committing abuses at home by human rights groups, including the use of excessive force and the killing of more than 100 people in 2023.

The planned Kenyan operation, even if it is able to commence, faces significant practical and logistical challenges, U.S. officials and congressional aides said. For starters, neither Kenya, the United States, nor other regional powers have stated what the rules of engagement would be for Kenyan forces once they are deployed to the country, where they face the daunting task of quelling powerful and heavily armed gangs and a weakened and embattled local police force.

There is also the broader question of whether adding more police will solve the deeper systemic issues that led to the current situation. “The police cannot make significant inroads against gangs absent a broader political breakthrough,” Pierre Espérance, the executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network in Haiti, argued in Foreign Policy last July. “In Haiti, gang members are not independent warlords operating apart from the state. They are part of the way the state functions—and how political leaders assert power.”

An unclassified U.S. intelligence assessment released this week predicted that Haitian gangs “will be more likely to violently resist a foreign national force deployment to Haiti because they perceive it to be a shared threat to their control and operations” and that Haiti’s national police have been “unable to counter gang violence and [have] been plagued by resource issues, corruption challenges, and limited training.”

Any deployment of Kenyan forces would also require substantial logistical support from the U.S. military, U.S. officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter said. Administration officials have told Congress that once given the green light, Kenyan police could be deployed to Haiti in a matter of 45 to 60 days in ideal conditions—and without U.S. boots on the ground. But Haiti has no clear base or logistics hub for the Kenyan police to be deployed to, particularly after gangs seized control of major power centers in Port-au-Prince.

Another complicating factor is the funding mechanism. After balking for nearly two years on proposals to deploy their own forces to Haiti, the U.S. and Canadian governments have both pledged to fund the Kenyan-led force, but no funding mechanism has been set up yet to do that. A multinational police mission in Haiti could cost an estimated $500 million to $800 million per year, State Department officials have told congressional oversight committees.

Risch has held up an estimated $40 million of the first tranche of U.S. funding for the Kenya-led mission. “[A]fter years of discussions, repeated requests for information, and providing partial funding to help them plan, the administration only this afternoon sent us a rough plan to address this crisis,” Risch said in a joint statement with McCaul. The administration “owes Congress a lot more details in a more timely manner before it gets more funding,” they said.

John Kirby, White House National Security Council spokesperson, said the situation is getting worse in the meantime. “The violence has been increasing, not decreasing, as well as the instability. And, of course, the Haitian people are the ones that are suffering as a result,” he told reporters on Thursday.

Edmond said that even if the Kenya-led mission gets underway, the United States has a “moral obligation to consider, before the arrival of the Kenyan forces, a way to help the national police forces that are now being overwhelmed by the gangs.”

“The United States is the leader of the free world. Haiti is a member of that world, one of the closest neighbors to the U.S. There is a moral obligation here to step in.”

Widdersheim said the United States can’t dodge responsibilities. “Half measures won’t be good enough this time,” she said. “The U.S. government hasn’t in the past seemed to care enough to truly invest in Haiti’s long-term development, and it’s to our detriment because nothing ever sticks; we just get stuck doing half measures that always fail.”

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black-arcana · 22 days

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HALESTORM's LZZY HALE: 'I'm Writing Some Of The Best Songs I've Ever Written'

In a new interview with Terrie Carr of the Morristown, New Jersey radio station 105.5 WDHA, HALESTORM frontwoman Lzzy Hale spoke about the band's plans for the follow-up to 2022's "Back From The Dead" album. She said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We're taking our time with it and we're writing a lot. We're doing our record with [producer] Dave Cobb, of all people, which is which is a new flavor for us. We kind of needed to shake it up.

"Just coming from a personal level, I'm in a really good place in my life," she explained. "I'm writing some of the best songs I've ever written, and this album, for me, and this is before I'm even discussing our collective M.O. as a band and what we want everything to sound like, but, for me, the songs that I'm writing… This is gonna be the HALESTORM album that kind of peels back the onion a little bit.

"I'm in a spot where I'm okay with giving myself permission to be open. And the fans have taught me a lot about that over the last album cycle, with 'Back From The Dead'. The difference between 'Back From The Dead' and this one being, 'Back From The Dead', that entire record, for me, was kind of a pep talk to be, like, 'Girl, you still got this. I don't know what's going on.' And it took, I think, the entire of that album cycle for me to actually settle into the point... It all kind of boiled down to this conversation I had with fans when we were in Europe. We were on a seven-week tour, so we always go through this messy middle; everybody does. You wanna know some folklore of being on a tour — four weeks is enough; seven weeks, everyone starts going a little crazy. 'Cause by the month mark, everyone's, like — we call it the messy middle; everyone's just kind of tired and there's no real end in sight. And we've all been living two feet from each other. Someone's being annoying. Someone's being a little bitch — it happens. And I was going through my own war in my head about whatever's coming next as this album cycle was kind of ending. 'I don't know where I'm at. I haven't written a new song in a while.' [I was] letting a lot of my disparaging thoughts get to me. And so here are our super fans, my ladies in shining armor — they call themselves the Lzzy Birds — in Europe. And it's a group of, like, 11 women, give or take, that just come to every show — every single show, every single meet-and-greet, front and center, without fail, they're there for the show. So during this messy middle, they started to ask me, like, 'Hey, are you doing okay? The show was great, but there's something behind your eyes that we can't see. And you don't have to tell us anything, but we're there for you' kind of thing. So I go through my normal bullshit in my brain. I'm, like, 'Oh, I'm just tired. It's tour. And I'm going through stuff.' And then the next day at the meet-and-greet, they all hand me these handwritten letters, and I'm paraphrasing for all of them, but each, in their own way, basically was saying, 'Hey, here's a list of reasons why we follow you. Here's what you've done for us. It's okay if you're not okay. And you don't have to be the savior. If you wanna cancel some shows, we will understand. Whatever you're going through, we're gonna be there for you no matter what, because you were there.' It really affected me. I was in the dressing room reading through all these, just crying my eyes out, and I immediately, the next day, because we had another show — it was, like, a three-in-a-row thing — next day, at the end of the show, I kind of held court with all of them next to the buses. And I'm just, like, 'I'm gonna tell you exactly what's going on in my life,' and this, and this and this, 'and I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm scared that I'm failing you,' and all of this, and I just let it out with them. And I realized something in that moment.

"I don't know if any of you people listening are front people or the spearhead of your operation. Sometimes it can feel really like you're an island and you're not even in the front seat of your life and you're just kind of white-knuckling it through," Lzzy added. "And what I realized is that instead of me being the strong person in that moment, I got more out of it as and more trust, more admiration, more connection with these fans of mine that have seen me through a lot of things than I could have just by keeping the veil up and being the strong person. I got more from it by opening myself up and being honest. And so I've taken all of those feelings and I am putting them now into this new music and working through them because they have allowed me to. My army that has been with me through every battle has given me permission to say, 'Hey, if you've gotta work through this' and 'we're gonna be with you no matter what,' that feeling of unconditional love from complete strangers — from strangers that didn't know you from before. And that was the connection. And then we're able to take that then past the handshake. I can put down the crown for a second and just be real with you guys. And then, what ended up happening after that is that then you have these conversations now, new conversations with the fans, not just about your touring or your vocal prowess or whatever, or whatever lyric, it's now about, 'Oh, so you're just as screwed up as I am, but you've also made it to the other side.' So it gives the bridge for hope. It makes it a little shorter. It gives it a little bit of gas to get through. Sorry, I'm blowing through analogies. But it affected me in a really positive way. And I'm very much looking forward to — the song that you guys helped me start, I am now ready to finish for you. And so it's gonna be this beautiful pass of the torch a little bit.

"Anyway, that's how it's kind of working out in my mind, but, again, best-laid plans… But we're excited for new music," Hale concluded. "And I'm sure there'll be some things that I'll end up sneaking in on this next tour because I can't wait to play new music for everybody. So for all of those that keep up with all the little tiny moments that go on in the set, keep your eyes and ears peeled, 'cause it could be a new song."

HALESTORM is working with Cobb after making three records with Nick Raskulinecz.

Cobb has shared in nine Grammy wins, including four for "Best Americana Album" and three for "Best Country Album". He's also been named "Producer Of The Year" by the Country Music Awards, the Americana Music Association (twice) and the Music Row Awards, and has been a Grammy nominee in the category.

Lzzy and her brother Arejay (drums) formed HALESTORM in 1998 while in middle school. Guitarist Joe Hottinger joined the group in 2003, followed by bassist Josh Smith in 2004.

Last May, HALESTORM teamed up with country singer Ashley McBryde for a reimagined version of the band's song "Terrible Things", which was originally featured on HALESTORM's latest album, the aforementioned "Back From The Dead".

youtube

#lzzy hale #halestorm #interview #Youtube

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flourbray · 2 months

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i think maybe tumblr ate my ask for the ask game? i'd love to know 🍻 and 🔮!

i think so -- i've been getting a lot of issues with this Most Definitely Functioning App And Website so i hope this works!

🍻 seeing races live

yes!! i will be somewhere out on the course for both the men's and women's Paris-Roubaix, which i'm super excited for as it'll be the first time i've seen a race live (except that time tour of britain passed through my hometown when i was ~4 but i don't remember much beyond waiting several hours in the heat for what amounted to a minute of unintelligible noise and cars going by), and i might be going to a Tour stage but we will see. plus definitely Tour of Britain if it still goes ahead and is nearby 🙏🙏

🔮 drop some predictions, no matter how big/small

okay let's have fun. all of these are just ~vibes~ and gut feelings but i will be making sure to bookmark this if anything does happen. variable startlists my beloathed.

Mathieu wins his third RVV from a small-group sprint but doesn't podium Roubaix. skips the Tour (or leaves at the end of first week) to focus on Olympic MTB where he wins a medal

Marianne Vos podiums Amstel

Jasper gets a big one-day win like Brugge-de-Panne again or GW, but misses out on the green jersey at the Tour

Cecilie wins two GT stages (if she rides two GTs, one if she rides one, but she crashed at Omloop, praying for a quick recovery 🙏🙏❤️)

Hugh Carthy wins a stage at the Giro i can feel it.

Tadej wins 3+ Giro stages then 2 Tour stages. comes off the back of winning the Giro in great form but misses out on the Tour podium because of a random event (illness/crash/mechanical etc) but another UAE rider makes the top 3

Cav gets #35, it's magical, wonderful, the commentators are crying, i'm crying, and then he doesn't start the next stage

Mads gets green at the Tour and 2 stage wins and probably green at the Dauphiné too

Primož wears yellow but doesn't win the Tour

'Giro stage shortened because of bad weather' would be a bit of a fork-found-in-kitchen prediction, but i think there'll be at least one Tour stage that's shortened/neutralised due to the heat

Whoever does win the Tour wins at least one other jersey (white if Remco, KOM if anyone else)

SDworx 1-2 at least two races with Demi and Lotte

there's a kind of surprise Olympics winner -- maybe a sprint goes weird, a breakaway go hell-for-leather and make it, who knows

Movistar get on the podium at Catalunya and top 5 Vuelta but signing Nairo again proves to be a mistake

stage winners at the Vuelta include Jay Vine, Egan Bernal, Guillaume Martin and Caleb Ewan (Jonas wins overall)

okay that's a lot actually, i love throwing prediction darts at the cycling season

early season ask game

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croszukis · 3 months

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beginning my rugby propaganda with my number 1 club's new jerseys (the nz super rugby teams have cycles where they all get new designs every 2 years, so it's a new jersey year!)

for the first time both the men's and women's clubs are wearing the same design, which is a nice touch I think as the women's league enters its 3rd season

and some close up details & some explanation about the meaning / cultural significance behind the designs:

Featuring prominently is the Huia bird whose feathers were tapu for Māori and worn by great Chiefs into battle. The presence of both male and female Huia signifies the unified approach and the collective mindset of the Chiefs Rugby Club teams.

The kōwhaiwhai (ornate swirls) depicted across the jersey represent the flow of the waterways throughout the region connecting the Chiefs with sponsors, members, players, clubs and supporters.

The Huia are depicted looking inwards at the taniwha (the protector) and the beating heart of the Chief (the player) who wears the jersey.

#rugby posting #chiefs rugby

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cherrysnax · 1 year

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hope people chill out soon, your take was immaculate and actually the reason I followed you initially bc i am an adult who likes cartoons and little kid shows but also doesn't get in internet fights about them and thinks adults who do are... wild, for lack of a better term..

but!!! now I wanna know about your comic (???maybe its a comic not sure) that you've mentioned, I couldn't find a tag to search but do you mind sharing about it? tysm either way have a good one

hi nonnie!! first of all ty for the well wishes and compliments! i'm sure once all the jokes and the offense die down, people will be relatively normal again... i hope.. lets get into the meat of the ask under the cut

EDIT: this got long so if u just want the basic gist, go to the very end!

soooo my girlfriend @pokemonleague and i decided back in...2018? to make spidersonas due to our love of comics and the movie into the spiderverse, but since we're nerds that totally span out of control. it went from a fan rp with several spider-man themed characters to a completely original concept with new characters, our own setting, power system-- the works. it is about superheroes, so it might not be your thing. okay so first backstory stuff

it used to be called the phillyverse and if u go into the tag u might find some old art, but its all extremely outdated (and bad. im not the bessst artist). after some delegation we decided to start making it a comic (we spent YEARS debating it) and named the project around last year. its uh called Show Your Spine!

I'm the worst at describing things but we have like 3 whole seasons entirely plotted out so I can pull somethin like a pitch together: while the vigilantism is a core aspect, with the main overarching plot being a group of unlikely heroes, old and new banding together to stop their city from being overrun by the mob, supervillains, and other threats. it's really about finding love and community in a city at war and finding the strength to protect and nourish it. all the while unlearning all the shit the last generations have taught us, to stop us from perpetuating the cycle of hate... while also beating the shit outta some baddies

in short its abt cringe-fail women doing cringe-fail things lmaoo. its a like a superhero-action-soap opera taking place in the retro-futuristic city of Chesire Grove, new jersey.

in this world, there's people with powers called Augments, who are just like you and me but due to changes in their DNA due were born with the ability to manifest different abilities (think mutants or metahumans). the tension between augments and humans is a little.. high right now, but allegedly better than they've ever been before. It's a newish era of human-augment relations, for better or worse.

we have an ensemble cast, and we intend on taking the main characters from the ages of 16 to eventually 25. the characters are aging in real-time.

OKAY PLOT TIME: The first few arcs focus on a delinquent teenage girl, Leo, trying to find a cure for one of her best friends who has fallen ill after trying a new drug, by all means necessary. during her quest for it, she meets the elusive newer vigilante Spitfire, who had saved her once before. Despite a rocky start, the two start a mentor-mentee type thing, in hope that the other can help them find what they're looking for. For Leo, she's looking for info on the man who made the drug that's been killing people, desperate to make him reverse engineer it. For Spitfire, they're looking for Chesire Grove's longest-running protector: Nightingale, who has suddenly gone missing. Spitfire's a bit new in town but lucky for them, the kid knows the city like the back of their hand.

At the same time, a sheltered augment teen's life is changing, as her overly protective father has finally realized that keeping her inside wasn't protecting her at all. freshly enrolled in a school for STEM students, Bobbi (also known by his nickname Retro) has to learn how to navigate the world for the first time and solve the full mystery of her past, all while her powers are on the fritz.

there's so much to this world, and we're so excited to share it with everyone!! i tried to be pretty vague cause of spoilers, and like i said, bad with words

#show your spine!#long post #webcomics #oh! one more thing #i know ppl r tired of media with kids. me too #not that its bad im just 22 #the characters have literally grown with us and to reflect that they uh literally grow with the audience #this is a loooong comic and by the end of it the teen characters are in their mid twenties #and the adult main characters are also just as important to the plot as well. because of that a subject matter SYS is pointed YA audiencesl #if u wanna know anymore #please lemme know because i wanna talk about it so bad #SyS is very much looking at superheroes from the lense of marginalized pp #*ppl much like they were intended to be #n for ppl who like it short n sweet its batfam meets x-men but theyre black gay and the worst people you know

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skinskisurf · 5 days

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#Cycle #Female cyclist #Bib shorts #Women in bib shorts #Black bib shorts #White bib shorts #Lycra #Lycra shorts #Women in Lycra #Women in Lycra shorts #Black Lycra #White Lycra #Jersey #women in jerseys #Sitting #Female

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nickgerlich · 6 months

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The Shape Of Things

I have a lot of fun during “blogging season” each semester. For 12 weeks I take deep dives each and every day to find relevant topics ripe for discussion, with the added challenge of somehow finding a common thread to share to all of my classes. Most of the time I am able to do that.

And then there are times like today in which the subject has marketing legs of its own, but offers a few chuckles too. Because why not? We all need to laugh a bit.Like when I read recently that socialite Kim Kardashian was expanding her line of Skims shapewear to include products for men. Feel free to chuckle if you like.

Now men’s underwear is a funny subject. It has long been said that women buy the majority of men’s underwear to begin with, and that men only buy their own underwear for a small portion of their years on earth, leaving that duty to Mom and then wives and girlfriends. We’re bad like that. Lazy. Trying to get every ounce of value possible from them.

And why not? No one sees them.

Men’s underwear has long been a non-starter when it comes to fashion and all that. The pilot episode of Breaking Bad showed Walter White in his signature tighy-whities out in the desert, he being the archetype of suburban middle-class manhood. We expected it.

But shapewear? Isn’t that newspeak for a girdle? Sara Blakely made her billions by reimagining the girdle, as well as its predecessor the corset, as shapewear. They all achieve the same thing, and ladies bought Spanx by the armful to help conceal bulging realities. I bet there isn’t a woman alive who doesn’t one or more of them tucked away in the dresser.

I know. It’s a cultural ideal point. Our culture chides women into fits of guilt if they don’t maintain the appearance of their girlish youth. Guys, though, are cut a lot of slack, with even the “Dad bod” being popular. You know. Love handles and the inability to see one’s belt buckle (and maybe their toes as well).

Kardashian is not the first to try to break into the men’s market, because Spanx has had men’s items for several years now. I saw them once at the local Dillards, gathering dust. I don’t know a single guy who would wear a man girdle.

I do, however, confess to having several base layer long-sleeve shirts that effectively accomplish the same thing. All of my cycling jerseys fit much the same way too. If you accidentally get the wrong size, you wind up feeling like a sausage.

While Kardashian is hoping that men buy her new undies, I’m guessing that it will be women buying them for the men in their life. “Here, honey. Try these on. Your old ones are starting to look a little ragged anyway.”

Then again, maybe Kardashian can usher in a new era of underwear-buying men, guys who care as much about their undies and overall appearance as women do. Instead of having to hold it in whenever trying to impress the ladies, you can just stand there confidently knowing that your stretchy skivvies are doing it all for you.

I do think that the advertising for products like these needs to change, though. They always show studly male models wearing them, but they are guys who don’t need them in the first place. You know, like those Peloton ads showing fit and trim models pounding the pedals.

They need to show before-and-after pics of rather plump men all of a sudden looking pretty good, like they just graduated from basic training. That might sell more boxers and briefs. I for one don’t want to look at a pro athlete sporting these duds. He gets paid to be fit. I get paid to teach. I don’t have to be ripped to stand in front of a classroom, or type blogs.

Sorry, Kim. I’m good over here. Like most men, I’ve probably got a few good years left in what I own. But if someone wants to gift me some new drawers, I’ll gladly accept them.

Dr “Suck It In” Gerlich

Audio Blog

#marketing #Kim Kardashian #Skims #shapewear #men

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