ColumnWhile there still isn’t a cure for the virus, those with HIV can keep it at bay by taking antiretrovirals (ARVs) and expect to have a long and healthy life (and healthy relationships). Although all humans with an Internet connection and a brain can easily research facts about HIV, many people still seem to really freak out when they discover someone around them has the virus. So, why does HIV stigma still exist? The answer is two-part and simple: ignorance and fear.

HIV/AIDS has been in the press spotlight for the past month thanks to Charlie Sheen’s “revealing” interview with NBC and the recent passing of World AIDS Day. Both events are positive instances in the “anti-stigma” movement.

World AIDS Day is always a welcomed event. On December 1, the infection and those living with it get the spotlight to remind everyone that (1)  you cannot get HIV by kissing, touching, etc. (yes, some people still think you can contract the virus this way) and (2) researchers are working their asses off to create even better drugs for people who have HIV. In fact, people who have HIV can lead healthy, happy lives, and have a near-normal life expectancy.

While Charlie Sheen‘s on-air admission of having HIV was a bit dramatic, Sheen’s admission was a big deal. While Sheen discussed some very important facts about HIV and being able to live a healthy life with the diagnosis, he also talked in depth about how he paid people to keep his status private.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all that he spent money to hide it,” Jonathan Scott, president and CEO of Boston’s Victory Programs, a nonprofit that works daily with those diagnosed with HIV and AIDS, told CNN. “HIV began with horrific stigma, and even 30 years into the disease there is still stigma that is different from other diseases, such as breast cancer.”

HIV stigma is incredibly detrimental to everyone. It hurts the public because it creates unnecessary fear and it harms patients because it can create shame, and deep depression and sadness. This depression and shame can, unfortunately, lead a patient to stop seeking the much-needed medical care patients need to lead a healthy life. CNN reports that “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there are 1.2 million people living with HIV in the United States today.”

Of those “only about 37% are actually seeing a clinician regularly,” Dr. Stephen Boswell, president and CEO of Boston’s Fenway Health, a health care organization that works with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, told CNN.

Sadly, the fact that HIV/AIDS still carries this unnecessary stigma isn’t surprising. Comedians, television writers, and everyday people still think it’s hilarious to make jokes about herpes (a totally manageable infection) and people they deem “slutty” (for the last time: your partner number doesn’t count — how you treat your partners does). Hell, I still remember hearing a morning talk show host make a joke about the then recent recommendation to call sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) sexually transmitted infections (STIs), saying that the change was only made to make people feel better about themselves… barf.

We’re all aware that ignorance and fear can lead to hate, so, let’s all make a pact to stop fearing what we don’t know and dedicate time to reading the facts rather than believing the hype.

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Woman holding sign about HIV stigma from miker, Shutterstock

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Charlie Sheen plans his comeback as Hollywood plans to forget his history of violence.

Maybe it’s all Jane Lynch’s fault. She’s just so cool, all progressive grace and comedy meshed into a statuesque beacon of tolerance. A happily married lesbian embraced by her peers, even her hair color blasts away at dumb blonde stereotypes. With Jane Lynch hosting the 2011 Primetime Emmys on Sunday night, every socially conscious TV watcher sat up a little straighter, proud that America was embracing a new vision of social tolerance.

So maybe that’s why this part stung. Like, really stung.

Enter Charlie Sheen. Neatly filling out his suit, the formerly highest paid actor in television was greeted with applause. “Thank you, good evening,” he said, politely waiting for the clapping to end. “Before I present outstanding lead actor in a comedy series, my old category, I want to take a moment to get something of my chest and say a few words to everybody here from Two and a Half Men. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you nothing but the best for this upcoming season. We spent eight wonderful years together and I know you will continue to make great television. Now, on to the Emmy.”

Then he paused to a roar of applause. As Natalie Finn of E!Online wrote moments later, “And that, friends, is how you cover your butt and start paving the way for your return to network TV.”

Suddenly, everything seemed to lose its Jane Lynchian glow. Some of us started slouching our foreheads towards the spinach dip. Charlie Sheen, known abuser of women, had made the first step in his journey back towards a $1.2 million an episode paycheck. For anyone confused as to why such a person deserves a comeback, or even applause, here’s how this works in the mind of Hollywood.

In 1990 Sheen accidentally shot fiancée Kelly Preston in the arm. Who hasn’t experienced a lover’s quarrel involving accidental gunplay? And she did break up with him, so what’s the problem?

In 1994, Sheen was sued by a college student he allegedly abused after she refused to have sex with him. Well, the case was settled out of court. She was probably just after his money, which she got. It’s a win win.

In 1996, porn star Brittany Ashland was thrown to the floor during a fight at Sheen’s Hollywood home. We’re supposed to care about a porn star?

In 2006, second wife Denise Richards filed a restraining order against Sheen after he allegedly shoved and threatened to kill her. Did you see Wild Things? Practically porn. 

In 2009, third wife Brooke Mueller called 911 after Sheen held a knife to her throat. Well, she keeps getting back together with him in between her own trips to rehab. Obviously there’s no real issue.

In 2010, porn star Capri Anderson filed a criminal complaint after Sheen went on a rampage in their hotel room at the Plaza Hotel. See: porn star, rumored prostitute. Why are we still talking?

In 2011, Sheen threatened to cut off Brooke Mueller’s head, put it in a box, and send it to her mother. He’s such a scamp.

And as most of the Internet knows, Sheen was only fired from Two and a Half Man after a public tirade against its creator, Chuck Lorre. Which happened in 2011, after 21 years of known violence against women.

But Sheen continues to “win” in Hollywood. Besides his crafted apology, he already has a new show in development. It’s about an anger management therapist who is angrier than his patients. Hopefully, his rage won’t be directed against women. But if it is? The ratings are going to be huge.

The post Charlie Sheen Makes Nice, Hollywood Blinks Its Blind Eye appeared first on EcoSalon.

A weekly round-up of EcoSalon’s top five stories.

In When You Feel Good, You Look Good, West Coast fashion correspondent Rowena Ritchie considers conscious consumption and muses, “Buying fashion for a good cause seems like a lovely idea, doesn’t it? You could say it’s like lifting two spirits with one swipe of your credit card. You buy an item and the designer donates some money to a good cause. That is until, like me, you’ve got enough charity printed tees to hold a small rally in your closet benefiting workouttopsforever.com.”

In VC’s, Angels and Investing In Women: What Are They Not Thinking?, senior editor Scott Adelson looks at the cold, hard facts: Women make up a minute fraction of the venture capital and angel investment community, and women entrepreneurs receive a tiny percentage of that community’s investment dollars. This is the first in a series of articles by Adelson, examining “Equity investment’s relationship with businesses that have traditionally been out of its mainstream, including women-owned, green and long-term-growth-oriented.”

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, is at the center of a heated controversy about reverse sexism. In Scott Adams: #Winning Or Not?, EcoSalon news editor Andrea Newell asks: “Some of his readers have pointed out, he seems to be taking lessons from Charlie Sheen on public relations. The question is, is he #winning or is his reputation going down in flames?”

Virgin America’s New Eco Luxe Terminal At SFO was unveiled this past week as the first green airport terminal in the country. The terminal is using a host of technologies to boost its green credibility – though we’re not so sure about the spaceship part.

The Foodie Underground column is turning one! In Foodie Underground: A Year In Review, columnist Anna Brones curates a round up of her favorite articles from the past year and invites you to send her your foodie favorites: “Maybe it’s a hand-me-down recipe that you can’t go to a dinner party without, maybe it’s your favorite local food truck that serves up a mean plate of organic tacos, maybe it’s a photo of your home brewed liqueurs, maybe it’s a painting rendition of a classic recipe, or maybe it’s your weekly indulgence for taking food porn shots. Whatever it is, we want to see it!” The winner of the contest wins a a set of Festival Sol Mini Bowls, made with recycled glass, from VivaTerra. Submissions are piling up, so be sure to get yours in soon.

Image: Wagner T. Cassimiro “Aranha”

The post Friday Five, Vol. 7 appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWhere celebrity becomes conscious.

Make no mistake, Lady Gaga is in on the joke. But what’s so funny? Fame, she says, moments before twirling a dildo between her fingers, and jumping down a hatch – only to emerge moments later in a Marie Antoinette wig and an evening gown made of live kittens chewing on intertwining threads of beef jerky. Lady Gaga is a never-ending performance artist whose determination to express her own kinetic view of culture has spanned a global empire. She might even be the first successful meta-celebrity. Certainly, the world is listening. But should we be?

Like most people on the planet, I’m not an internationally famous celebrity who can strike corporate promotional deals while getting millions of people to groove to my tunes. But I wonder if the experience of fame would feel something like speeding through space towards a black hole. Or at the very least, it would feel like driving towards downtown Los Angeles right after rush hour, racing through space at terrifying speeds while looking for the singularity aka the exit to the 105. Fame via Charlie Sheen can seem like a force beyond control to those watching on the other side of the event horizon. (And somewhere, a scientist is slapping her forehead at my abuse of physics). But Lady Gaga, aka Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta of New York City, is clearly in control of her own spacecraft.

Lady Gaga is on the way to becoming an icon of post-feminist sexuality. But is she a confident cultural attaché to our own fantastical fantasies? Or she is more of a mouthpiece of modern times, a voice raging against homophobia and discrimination? Mostly, she’s a modern day Mad Hatter jumping through the rabbit hole of mass culture. Gaga’s got the keys to the kingdom and she’s asking us to follow her into a creative dynasty of tolerance. Or, she might be provoking a nightmare of dystopian culture – take your pick.

Part pop star, part performance artist, Lady Gaga examines celebrity with a consciousness we’re not really used to or expecting from a pop star. And this is why it works. She gets us to pay attention first through her music, with songs skewering a celebrity-obsessed society (See: Paparazzi). She’s known for appearing pant-less in public or wearing crustaceans on her head and feet. She never seems to break character – even walking through an airport, she’s in costume. As the current cover girl was recently described by Vogue, “Suddenly the curtains part and Lady Gaga makes her entrance, mincing into the room holding a porcelain teacup and saucer in one hand and a wineglass for me in the other. (Like fainting on command or dropping a glove, the long-lost art of making an entrance, which Gaga seems to have single-handedly revived, is a remarkably effective way to shift the conversation).”

She’s a Glam Rocker playing it straight.

In doing so, Lady Gaga possesses an enviable credibility for her causes. Forbes recently named her as one of the world’s most powerful celebrities. An extremely vocal proponent of gay rights, she recently announced that she was ending her partnership with Target due to their political donations to MN Forward, a group that supported the anti-gay candidate Tom Emmer in a failed run for governor in Minnesota last year. Gaga previously spoke of the agreement with Billboard Magazine, telling them “Part of my deal with Target is that they have to start affiliating themselves with LGBT charity groups and begin to reform and make amends for the mistakes they’ve made in the past…our relationship is hinged upon their reform in the company to support the gay community and to redeem the mistakes they’ve made supporting those groups.”

But Target failed to live up to this expectation, so Lady Gaga responded by severing their ties. As E! Online reports, “Target has refused to promise that it would never donate to a political candidate or group believed to be anti-gay.” Obviously, a giant retail chain would not bend its will for a celebrity endorsement deal. But Lady Gaga has certainly shined a giant spotlight on Target’s business practices, and you have to wonder if this parting of ways was part of her business plan all along.

Lady Gaga’s not the first performance artist or shock-rocker to push a cause. She knows this. Derivative of David Bowie, daughter of Madonna, Gaga herself told Vogue that she “could go on and on about all of the people I have been compared to – from Madonna to Grace Jones to Debbie Harry to Elton John to Marilyn Manson to Yoko Ono.” But unlike her predecessors, Gaga has use of a multi-media empire than can reach a global audience with an intimacy never before possible. She’s a product of her time based on a history of those trying to make a point through performance.

There’s one foremother she appears to be mostly closely emulating, perhaps without even knowing it. Meet the Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, who in the 1920s was dubbed a “living legend of Greenwich Village.” Born Else Hildegard Ploetz in 1874 near the Baltic Sea, the Baroness became an icon of the New York Dada crowd of the early twentieth century. Dadaism, which peaked mostly in Europe from 1916 to 1922, was partially embodied by European artists living in New York City who used visual arts, theater, poetry and more to send a message of anarchy and an anti-war party line. The movement arrived on the heels of World War I, which was widely seen by the Dadaists as the result of bourgeois interests and colonialism. Dadaists like the Baroness were known to ridicule the aspects of culture they deemed meaningless while rejecting the laws of conventional taste and beauty.

The Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, Dec. 1915, International News Photography,
in “The Art of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven” (Courtesy of Naumann Fine Art)

The Baroness was one of the preeminent Dadaists in New York City. As Amelia Jones describes her in “Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic History of New York Dada,” she was a “poet, artist, and performative disruption to bourgeois as well as avant-garde assumptions…who paraded her vocal and bodily difference openly in the streets and artistic salons of World War I-era New York.”

And here’s how The Baroness herself describes an ensemble she wore to the French Embassy in Germany. In her own words, “I went to the consulate with a large-wide sugarcoated birthday cake upon my head with fifty flaming candles lit – I felt just so spunky and afluent [sic]! In my ear I wore sugar plumes or matchboxes – I forget wich [sic]. Also I had put on several stamps as beauty spots on my emerald-painted cheeks and my eyelashes were made of gilded porcupine quills – rustling coquettishly – at the consul – with several ropes of dried figs dangling around my neck to give him a suck once and again – to entrance him.”

Any of this sound familiar?

Like the Baroness, Lady Gaga wears the outrageous as easily as if she picked it up at her local Target. Would the Baroness have ever struck a deal in the first place with the ultimate superstore of the masses? Probably not. But then, Lady Gaga speaks the language of mass, modern culture. In a sense, she’s an anti-anarchist promoting a skewed aesthetic that nonetheless speaks to millions. Perhaps it is because she’s employing one of the most accessible means on the planet – pop music – to convey her own message of tolerance. At the moment, this is a message of gay tolerance. What it will be in the future remains to be seen, but undeniably, we’re all listening, and she knows it. All we have to do is sit back and wonder just how gaga will Gaga go.

This is the second installment in Katherine Butler’s column, Shade Grown Hollywood, where celebrity becomes conscious. “Shade grown” refers literally to shade grown coffee, a farming method that “incorporates principles of natural ecology to promote natural ecological relationships.” Shade grown is our sustainable twist on Hollywood.

Images: loritingey, 36292117@N00, Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, shankbone

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A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Ruin porn is a nasty thing and yet our objectification of all thing crumbling and abandoned is strong. Detroit, the largest city in the state of Michigan is the American automobile industry’s main squeeze. How can the home of Motown music legacies and Motor City mechanics be in such decay? You Know It When You See It takes a closer look.

Mobile social platforms are hot right now and a sustainable fashion app? Right up our alley. Writer Rowena Ritchie interviews GreenGlamGo founder, Clarissa Nicola, about her company’s new green fashion finder app in Sustainable Fashion? There’s An App For That.

We’ve seen too much of Charlie Sheen of late, but when it comes to celebrity consciousness, a star can take a cause a long way. George Clooney – who is certainly easier on the eyes – has a long and storied list of social activism. “Despite his involvement in bringing the Darfur genocide to light, he considers it ‘the greatest failure of my life’ – because little changed after he and his father smuggled cameras into a refugee camp to bring to light the horrors committed against an entire nation.” In Katherine Butler’s column, George Clooney Vs. Charlie Sheen: Welcome To Shade Grown Hollywood, we look at Hollywood without the rose-colored sunglasses.

We launched the new series Places & Spaces this week, and they all depict amazing representations of those idyllic places we all dream of and hope to go to. Shelter editor Leigha Oaks takes us on a visual vacation, first stop: Juvet Landscape Hotel.

The Hyde Amendment was passed in 1976. If you’ve never heard of it, Hyde ensures that federal money is not used to fund abortions on military bases, in Planned Parenthood facilities or anyplace else. “Anti-choice politicians and activists have spent a lot of time over the last few months making sure that there’s confusion about how government dollars are used to fund abortions. Here’s the quick answer: they’re not,” explains Libby Lowe. In Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…And Don’t You Dare Get Pregnant, we learn the most intrusive employer of all might just be the U.S. government.

All right, we can’t resist one more…

Has your gardening habit yielded yet another bumper crop of squash or greens you can’t give away fast enough? Plenty of people have the same problem and they’re turning the veggie surplus into a profitable cottage industry. In The Green Plate: Is Urban Farming The Next Green Cottage Industry? we get the update on how the urban farming legalization trend is sweeping the country, and putting green not just in our mouths, but in our wallets.

Image: Michael Ruiz

The post The Friday Five, Vol. 4 appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWhere celebrity becomes conscious.

Right now, I’m applying ruby red lipstick. I’m putting on my wedding dress – the only vintage-like dress I own – and I’m stepping out onto a balcony to address the masses, meaning, the neighbor’s gardener who is running the leaf blower and totally ignoring me. But here goes anyway – I’m raising my hands to the skies and achieving a look to make Madonna proud. I’m shouting, “It’s time for a change! We need to get conscious! Don’t cry for me, Hollywood! The truth is I never left you!”

Or so goes the scene in my head when I think about an eco-conscious, sustainable, anti-materialistic Hollywood. The entertainment industry can be like a boulder that crashes down the hill of our cultural zeitgeist, blasting messages of consumerism and superficiality. Really, how can such an industry be conscious? And more to the point, does anyone care?

Well, I care. And you care. We’ve been shaken out of our blissed out-state where bottled water is a good thing and plastic shopping bags make baby seals happy. And some of us operate within the great publicity machine and cultural manipulator that is Hollywood, and we do so with our eyes wide open.

Welcome to Shade Grown Hollywood. It’s not all Kardashian country and Beverly Hills Botox in Los Angeles. I’m reporting to you less than a mile east of the Hollywood sign. I have a backyard that runs into a Scientology center adjacent whole-grain-featuring lunch joints. Celebrity has gone conscious in the afternoon shade of the Hollywood sign, and I’m here to bring you its angle week after week.

And here’s why. Sure, I live in Hollywood. I also write for it. I’ve written for characters ranging from the sassy-yet-vulnerable police woman to scamps espousing the values of a corporation that idolizes mouse ears. I was a party girl at points. I’ve been known to cover a red carpet. I’ve got dirt, and I’ll sling it when something needs to be mulched.

History aside, I have an idea of what it means to live green in LaLa Land. Some might argue that it’s impossible for Hollywood and all the superficiality to ever truly be conscious. After all, celebrity seems more recently known for bombastic meltdowns a la Charlie “I’m tired of pretending I’m not special” Sheen to John “I love Hitler” Galliano. But society is as complicated as the pompous, ridiculous extremes Hollywood mirrors back at us. And for every bloated, Botoxed beauty, there’s a conscious celebrity applying her Jane Iredale lip gloss for an event. For every Anne Hathaway getting paid $750,000 to wear jewelry at the Oscars, there’s, well…it’s hard to beat that. Really, Anne? There’s probably an embattled school district near you that could use a steep donation just about now.

But beyond material endorsement, there are the causes promoted by Hollywood. The industry can be a preening celebutante, posed on the red carpet with a hip thrown out dramatically, only later to turn up in the middle of a DUI mug shot or wearing a scarf over her head at a refugee camp. They are opposite extremes, and yet – both so very Hollywood.

And this duality holds true for Tinsel Town’s treatment of environmental issues. The entertainment industry risks hypocrisy every time it takes up a cause célèbre to promote environmental consciousness. It is an industry that hums with energy flowing into film shoots while yielding an unimaginable amount of trash and waste. Celebrity endorsement of a product feeds mass consumerism like a monster in a Grimm’s fairy tale, filling our landfills with an endless parade of junk. Jack climbs a beanstalk sanctioned by Natalie Portman, so suddenly all his friends are planting magical beans and praying for rain. We’re getting choked out by trash, and it’s all in the name of Britney Spears’ perfume. Or Jessica Simpson’s clothing line.

And yet, Hollywood would like to imagine itself green and in some respects, it is. Aside from a few stalwart Republicans, mostly headlined by Kelsey Grammer, Hollywood is notoriously liberal-leaning. Sometimes, it really is just lip service. But Hollywood holds both sides of an environmentalist’s heart. Leonardo DiCaprio can use his wattage to promote cleaner living, which is a good thing. But this happens while the carbon footprint of his film productions stomps one giant foot in front of another. So there’s an uncomfortable edge to the good green deeds, like a shade of smog darkening a hybrid’s sunroof.

This isn’t to say that celebrities who promote conscious causes are wrong. After all, how green is green? How different is this from the rest of us carrying our cloth bags to the grocery store or powering our fuel-efficient cars? We consume fossil fuels, but we do so in a Prius. We live on the grid, but we recycle. We do the best we can. Ultimately, Hollywood and its minions just provide amplified versions of the contradictions most of us feel in life. Some work to help while others work to consume. For every “tiger man with Adonis DNA” (ahem, Charlie), comes a George Clooney, using his celebrity to enhance awareness of atrocities in Darfur.

And in comparing Charlie Sheen to George Clooney, we have our point. Both are sons of Hollywood and both are noted playboys. But it’s the way they live their lives that makes them polar opposites. There’s the Hollywood of Charlie Sheen, who seems to be summoning every aspect of crazy into a mammoth volcanic spew of narcissism. While some experts are calling Sheen bipolar, he calls himself “bi-winning” and recently told 20/20 that his brain fires in “a way that is perhaps not terrestrial.” Sheen may or may not be mentally ill and struggling with addiction, but he’s certainly living a lifestyle that is largely unconscious and consequence-free – at least for the moment.

And then we have George. Clooney’s list of social activism is long and storied. Despite his involvement in bringing the Darfur genocide to light, he considers it “the greatest failure of my life” – because little changed after he and his father smuggled cameras into a refugee camp to bring to light the horrors committed against an entire nation. He calls humanitarian awards for helping those victimized by Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake “embarrassing” because “You don’t want to be awarded for doing what you’re supposed to be doing.” Even after contracting malaria on a recent diplomatic trip to the Sudan to prevent genocide in the area, he just called it “good fun.” Clooney is a man with perspective, decency, and a sense of responsibility. And he’s still so Hollywood.

Put Sheen and Clooney together in a fight for supremacy, and who would win? Would it be the humble advocate of the Sudan or the brain-addled addict who smacks around women? As the Buddha noted, there has to be evil so that good can prove its purity. And Hollywood plays itself out as cleanly as a universe filled with good and bad. Conscious and unconscious. And all the shades between.

Hollywood illustrates that it’s not easy living consciously. But while being able to list off the names of the Kardashian sisters might not enable us to live a more productive life, it doesn’t make us unfit for duty in the quest to connect with our world in a sustainable, enlightened way. Because celebrity can be conscious.

This is the first installment in Katherine Butler’s column, Shade Grown Hollywood, finding the conscious in celebrity. “Shade grown” refers literally to shade grown coffee, a farming method that “incorporates principles of natural ecology to promote natural ecological relationships.” Shade grown is our sustainable twist on Hollywood.

Main image: Loop_oh
Image: 26230969@N08

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