Hasta La Gadget!

 Incipio just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Shortly after after announcing that it had acquired up budget headphone maker Skullcandy, the Irvine-based accessories conglomerate has picked up Griffin for an undisclosed amount. The Nashville mobile peripheral manufacturer will join an sizable brand portfolio that already includes Incase, Braven, ClamCase and Incipio’s own titular… Read More

Paradigm Shifters is a series of interviews with a select group of women and men from eclectic walks of life. It will highlight unspoken, real-life insights on how they have been able to turn weakness into strength. A naked soul point of view of how their breakdowns were really a preparation for breakthroughs. They are your quintessential paradigm shifters; internal shifts converted into genuine change.

Everything I have ever done has been focused on this underlying theme of shifting the paradigm because, “What we think determines what we feel and what we feel determines what we do.” Hence, why Empowered by You takes lingerie, which has traditionally been seen merely as a tool of seduction and redirected that energy as a tool of empowerment.

I hope from these stories you will look at your own situations, struggles and accomplishments through a different lens. At the very least you will be more equipped with real life tools to change your own paradigm. At the end of the day, we are our own Alchemist turning the silver we were born with into the gold we are destined to become.

Zarif Sahin – Associate Broker at Keller Williams Realty and Owner of Anatolia Properties, Image by Alimond Studio

What did you initially think of marriage as a young girl?
My parents were Turkish, but I was brought up in Germany. I was the youngest girl and had six other siblings. My parents were hard workers, which they made sure to instill in us. Although they weren’t very educated, I developed a love for education. I remember the inequality between how girls and boys were treated in our family and it inspired me to be a lawyer, and work towards equality through this occupation. In 1985, my parents decided to return to Turkey. Most times I was consumed with schoolwork and sports, so I didn’t really think I would be married until after college. As I grew to be a teenager, I noticed that men were more dominant and the women were mostly homemakers and submissive. My dream was to finish college and marry someone who was more modern, educated, and loving. This dream was shattered when I found out that my parents had arranged for me to be married at the age of fourteen. All I wanted was to continue to go to school, but my mother convinced me that I would continue my education in the USA after marriage.

In your Ted Talk in 2013 you said approximately 14 million girls under age 18 every year become child brides. In 2016, it is now around 15 million. Why do you think this still happens today?
The most prominent reasons are culture, poverty, and gender inequality. In some cultures girls are viewed less important than boys. The boy gets educated but the girl is considered a financial burden, and is married off out of necessity. In some cultures the girl is married off young to avoid her from falling in love or causing some form of shame upon the family. And in some cultures, the girl is married off as a symbol of peace between two fighting tribes.

What are the dangers of young girls becoming child brides?
Physically and mentally they are not ready for marriage. They can suffer dangerous consequences during pregnancy, childbirth. Many child brides are subject to abuse which leads to life threatening injuries or severe depression. Most child brides are not allowed to continue their education after marriage, forcing them to become fully dependent on their spouse. Due to lack of education, they are not able to contribute to their family finances. In the event of a divorce or if they become widowed, they have no idea how to support themselves or their children. This causes them to become a burden on the family that initially arranged the marriage, but the burden has multiplied because they may have children. Because of their lack of resources and limited knowledge, they’ll often bring up illiterate children as well, fueling this vicious cycle.

How have you broken the cycle of poverty and becoming child brides in your family?
I always loved and believed in education. During my marriage I would check-out books from libraries and find ways to learn at home. Instead of falling into hopelessness, I had to switch my way of thinking. I considered my divorce as a newfound freedom. Immediately, I enrolled myself in classes to improve my knowledge. Every time I took a class, I felt more empowered. I could see the positive correlation education had on my finances and family. I always let my daughters know that their thoughts, their opinions, and their lives mattered. I made them feel that we are a team. We studied together, we learned together and we excelled together. I treat them the same way boys are treated. I also encourage them to love freely but responsibly. I tell them that they will choose whom and when they will marry.

How did you leave your husband?
For many years I suffered many tribulations in that marriage. I can’t say he’s a horrible person; the way he treated women was probably just how he was brought up. As my girls grew older, I saw more of myself in them and I didn’t want them to have the same fate. That was my main driving force. Unfortunately, it took years for me to build up the courage. I had no place to go and had no knowledge of any help that might be out there. So I secretly began to save an emergency fund, knowing the day for a separation would come someday. We had so many disagreements and after one severe occasion, I just knew I didn’t want my children to be in that environment anymore. I felt a sudden fire in me and it pushed me to take my children and leave.

What should we do to stop girls from becoming child brides?
First, we need to inform communities about the dangers of child marriages and how it impacts the economy. Besides monetary resources, we need to create mentoring programs to help them develop skills. We can connect the girls who are susceptible of becoming child brides to qualified individuals willing to help. Most of these girls are very bright and they can learn new skills pretty quickly. If we help empower and educate the girls, then they can help their families, communities and countries out of poverty.

Second, in many countries, the legal age limit for marriage has been set for 18 years. But child marriages still occur with parental consent. In most countries, if a man engages in a sexual relation with a minor, it’s a crime. But if he enters into a marriage with a minor, this behavior is accepted by society. Instead of putting a Band-Aid on this issue, we need to dig deeper, change laws and create consequences for those who allow child marriages to happen and for those seeking a marriage with a child.

Breakdown to breakthrough?
My lowest point was when I left my marriage. I was without any funds, without any proper English, without any clothes, without anything but the danger of losing my children. The most important reason I was able to keep it together was my friend, Daphne DeHaven. She held my hand throughout the entire process. I will never forget that. Every time I was at the point of giving up, I would picture my daughters and I would tell myself that this fight was not only about me. My breakthrough moment was when I earned my real estate license and then my broker’s license. I loved helping people buy and sell homes, and being a part of an important milestone in their lives. I also created a mentoring program for the Virginia Women’s Business Conference, and sat on the board of Loudoun Abused Women’s Shelter. While I was working on moving up in my career, my eldest daughter graduated college at the same time. This inspired me so much that I went back to college too so I could earn my bachelor’s degree.

Legacy?
I want to be remembered as the voice for child brides. The woman who changed the thoughts and beliefs of how girls are viewed. Everything I lived through was for a reason. This is my journey and I will continue to work on this issue as long as I can. I don’t ever want any girl to have to go through what I went through. But, if the society continues to accept practices like child marriages, then change can’t happen.

Zarif Sahin captivated and moved me with her honesty, bravery, and commitment to serve others. She demonstrates the good we can do when we put aside our fears and focus on self improvement. She is not just an extraordinary example for her daughters but all daughters.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Among Americans, gymnastics is one of the most popular Olympic sports. In 2012, over 38 million people watched the USA women’s team take gold in London, and the “Fab 5,” led by America’s third consecutive Olympic gymnastics champion Gabby Douglas, returned home as celebrities. This year, with a similarly dominant team that includes Douglas and 2012 veteran Aly Raisman, as well as three-time world champion Simone Biles, NBC can reasonably expect similar numbers.

It’s not just Olympic viewership where the sport is popular, either; across the nation, at hundreds of clubs, close to 74,000 American girls and women are doing artistic gymnastics (the official name for the version of the sport that involves vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise), according to numbers provided by USA Gymnastics.

It might not be the NFL or the NBA, but gymnastics is big here. Americans love gymnastics, and the popularity of the women’s side of the sport considerably outweighs that of the men’s.

Some of that popularity is due to the breathtaking daring involved: There are few things more thrilling than watching a gymnast launch herself into a tumbling series on the 4-inch-wide balance beam, or watching her whip her body around the high bar into a dazzling dismount followed by an improbable rock-solid stuck landing. Gymnastics, as gymnasts and coaches know, is physics; it’s governed by the rules of inertia, momentum and rotation, like the rest of the world. To outside viewers, though, it can seem more magic than physics ― how else to explain how these young women manipulate their bodies into feats that ought to be physically impossible? No wonder it’s a must-watch on NBC every four years.

There are other reasons why gymnastics is one of the most beloved sports at any Games, though, and they’re less about the magic of the sport than they are about how gymnastics stretches cultural norms around women’s bodies and women’s sports only as far as we’re comfortable. They’re less about the delight viewers feel at seeing a gymnast stick a galactically high vault than they are about how the sport walks the fine line of pushing boundaries while compensating for its transgressions against gendered expectations.

In her new book The End Of The Perfect 10, gymnastics journalist Dvora Meyers documents the sport’s shift to a new scoring system with theoretically limitless scoring, in which the difficulty of a gymnast’s routine and her execution of it are evaluated separately, with the two scores added together to produce a final score. The goal of the new Code of Points was to find a way to reward gymnasts for attempting increasingly difficult routines and discourage them from playing it safe in order to perform perfectly ― and to recognize when routines were being performed well. It was implemented in 2006, and 10 years on, one thing is clear: The sport has become dramatically more athletic.

Gymnastics has also tended toward increasing difficulty; the vaults that were being performed by Olympic champions in the 1970s and 1980s are now considered easy enough for lower-level gymnasts to perform. Watch a video of Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut vaulting at the 1972 games and a video of American Carly Patterson vaulting at the 2004 Games, the last to be held under the old Perfect 10 scoring system, and it’s clear that there’s been some difficulty deflation.

But the new scoring system, Meyers argues, has accelerated that phenomenon, because the new Code of Points puts a greater emphasis on acrobatics and tumbling over the dance elements that used to be common on floor and beam. The result, says Guardian sports journalists Elizabeth Booth, is that “gymnasts have become athletes.” The ideal body shape for the sport has changed, yet again, from improbably strong but short and skinny, or with long, balletic lines, to spectacularly muscular, with an even greater emphasis on the strength of lower body muscles required for explosive tumbling and vaulting.

Gymnasts have become athletes. Crucially, some of the more difficult vaults and tumbling tricks are ones that were pioneered by male gymnasts and that women are now attempting and mastering. And as the sport has become more difficult and the gymnasts more undeniably, mind-bogglingly strong, the aesthetics of the sport have changed to emphasize their femininity, as if to compensate and reassure those who view femininity and athleticism as contradictory.

For one thing, if you watch the Games this week, you’ll notice that the gymnasts are heavily made up, as they are in most competitions. Until recently, the U.S. gymnastics team had a sponsorship deal with CoverGirl. Sometimes, the team will compete in matching bold red lipstick, as they did earlier this year at last year’s World Championships in Glasgow. Gymnasts have long worn makeup in competition, and when you consider the number of cameras being pointed at them, beaming close-up images of them around the globe, you can understand why. But in recent years, watching gymnastics competitions has left me wondering ― especially since makeup was prohibited in meets when I was a gymnast in the late ‘90s and early 2000s ― when they find the time on meet days to apply so much of it.

So it goes for jewelry, which was similarly prohibited when I was a gymnast. We were not permitted to wear jewelry of any kind ― no earrings, no necklaces, no navel rings, nothing. At the risk of bearing too close a resemblance to an old man yelling at a cloud, I would say this seems like a necessary rule, for obvious reasons. Jewelry gets caught on things, it bumps against your body and distracts you, it can come off and go missing in the gym. An earring on a gymnast always looks like a bloody mess waiting to happen ― what’s to stop it from getting caught on a coach’s sleeve while she’s spotting you and tearing out of your earlobe? Yet earrings are now permitted in international competitions, provided they’re studs, and they’re commonplace.

And then, there’s the sparkles. As the New York Times documented this week, international gymnastics is experiencing something of a sparkle arms race, with leotards becoming increasingly crowded with crystals. In 2008, the Times noted, Olympic Champion Nastia Liukin won her medal in a leotard that featured 184 crystals. Four years later, Douglas’ leotard had 1,188 crystals. This year, the Team USA leotards have 5,000 crystals ― each.

The combined effect ― of the makeup, the jewelry, and the glitter ― is an impression of a concerted effort to convey that these girls may well be athletes, but they are still girls.

Meyers agrees that a desire to compensate for athleticism with sparkling displays of femininity may explain the Swarovski surge. She also allows that there may be other factors at play; elite gymnasts tend to compete longer and therefore be older than they once were, “so maybe they can express their aesthetic preferences a little better.” The same goes for makeup, she says: Because the gymnasts are older, “they’re given a little more permission to play with makeup than they used to have, and they’re a little older, so maybe they’re allowed to assert themselves a little better.”

All the same, the dramatically increased difficulty of the sport has coincided with a noticeable shift in the gendered self-presentation of gymnasts, and the two would appear to be connected.

Recent changes aside, there are other reasons why gymnastics appeals so widely that have less to do with the sport itself and more to do with cultural expectations of girls and women. For one, as Meyers notes, gymnastics is not strictly adversarial: The athletes compete against each other, but each routine, each gymnast’s performance, exists independently of all the others. They aren’t chasing and tackling each other to gain possession of a ball or aiming shots at each other’s goals. They’re competing against each other, but there is no physical contact of any kind, and each routine is a performance that, in theory, shouldn’t be influenced by the rival who performed immediately before.

It’s probably no coincidence that one of America’s most popular women’s sports is one in which athletes perform more than they compete. This is a form of feminine athletic involvement we’re comfortable with; even though they’re throwing themselves around in skin-tight leotards that show every line in their six-packs, they’re competing in an appropriately feminine way. This may also account for the relative unpopularity of men’s gymnastics, which is similarly non-adversarial; America’s most popular men’s sport is one in which athletes pummel each other to the point of causing permanent and debilitating neurological injuries. 

Finally, there’s the ways that media coverage of gymnastics encourage viewers to focus on gymnasts’ bodies, muscled and athletic though they are, in ways that are perfectly in keeping with a culture that objectifies the female body and often undermines women’s abilities and achievements by emphasizing their physical appearance. It’s evident in press shots of gymnasts wearing leotards but with their hair down and flowing, instead of pulled back tight as is necessary for training and competition ― as if to reassure the viewer that they’re athletes, but they’re also women.

It’s evident in the ways that commentators comment on and compare the size and shapes of gymnasts’ bodies, in terms that have varied, over time, from excessively frequent to downright creepy. And it’s obvious in the tendency of media outlets to feature photos of gymnasts with their legs wide open and their crotches facing directly to the camera. Clearly, these photos are spectacular ways to convey the strength and flexibility of gymnasts, but the widespread reliance on the “crotch shot” to communicate that idea suggests at best a lack of imagination, and at worst a sexualization of world-class athletes, some of whom are very young indeed.

In short, one of the ways in which gymnastics is made palatable to ― and wildly popular with ― a mainstream audience is by making it more closely resemble the rest of the world, where women are valued not for what their bodies can do but for how they look. It’s a world where women’s achievements, be they athletic or intellectual, are often perceived to be at odds with their ability to perform a particular kind of femininity. A world where women and girls often feel pressure to cushion the transgressive impact of their excellence in athletic or intellectual fields ― long viewed as the province of men ― by emphasizing that femininity, with sparkles and lipstick.

There are many reasons to love gymnastics. For me, the love is rooted in memories of my own gymnastics career, and in my awe at the strength, tenacity and fearlessness of little girls, whether or not they grow up to be Olympic champions. It’s easy to enjoy the sport for its death-defying tricks and its sparkly glamor. But as we tune in to watch this year’s highly anticipated competition, we should remember there are other, less savory reasons for the sport’s appeal: Even as it challenges us to see girls and women as exceptional athletes, it reassures us that ultimately, they will be kept in their place.

For more Olympics coverage: 

• Here Are The 5 Superhumans Who Just Made The U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team
• Aly Raisman Won’t Let The ‘Aging Gymnast’ Stigma Hold Her Down
• Why Gymnastics Abandoned The Perfect 10 And Embraced Jaw-Dropping Athleticism
• Here’s What The 1996 Olympics U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Team Looks Like Now

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 One of these days we’re going to see aircraft go electric, just as cars are — but not for a while. In the meantime, we can’t slack off when it comes to the research that will make it possible. NASA has announced five research projects that may help make planes more efficient and green. Read More

Several days ago I went ocean fishing with a friend and colleague. We looked forward to a glorious day out in the Atlantic–blue skies, calm seas, and a good catch of flounder and sea bass to take home. As soon as we left the Indian River Inlet just south of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, the sea got choppy.

“It’s always rough at the mouth of the inlet,” my friend said to me.

We were in a small boat–two eager fishermen a seasoned boat captain and a young mate. As we moved out away from the shore, the wind picked up and the sea tossed the small boat up and down and rolled it side to side. To stabilize ourselves, we hung on to the edges of a large cooler–our seats. My friend had a patch that protects you from getting seasick.

I didn’t.

After an hour of rolling in five-to seven-foot swells, we anchored in an area where bottom fish like to congregate. Our lines went to the ocean floor–some 90 feet down–and we waited. As the waves rocked us, I got very seasick. As we swayed back and forth, I hung my head over the side of the boat and retched into the sea. In a few minutes, I recovered and tried to fish anew.

More vomiting. What’s more, there were very few nibbles out there in the ocean’s vast emptiness.

At that moment, I felt completely vulnerable. Nausea had taken control of my body. My woozy mind drifted into thoughts about how our exposure to the brute power of nature can make us feel small and insignificant. A large wave could easily capsize our small boat casting us into rough seas–never to be found or recovered.

As we turned around and headed back to shore, these feelings of vulnerability compelled me to think about the fragility of our social contact, which, during this election season has also drifted into rough seas. The GOP has nominated a candidate for president, Donald J Trump who, besides his demonstrated racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, gender bias, homophobia, religious intolerance and penchant for telling lies, seems to have little to no respect for our democratic processes. In his paranoid world of fantasy, everyone is against him. The media are unfair. When members of his own party question his egocentric judgment he says they are horrible–nothing more than weak losers who viciously attack him, which in his warped view of world, means he has to hit back. There are no rules of decorum or decency in the summer or Trump. Indeed, most of his followers don’t seem to care if Mr. Trump is telling the truth. They don’t seem to be bothered by his childlike outbursts that break all the rules of long established political decorum.

Mr. Trump’s reality television version of a political campaign has dominated the media. His irresponsible and inappropriate talk has finally precipitated a sharp drop in Mr. Trump’s poll numbers. Threatened with a humiliating loss, he now contends that the election is going to be rigged. They (whoever they are) will steal the election. In the real world this assertion is ridiculous. States and municipalities govern our elections. Cases of election fraud are quite rare. Sadly, chants of election rigging take us back to the world of conspiracy theories, back to the fantasies of the birthers and those who believe that President Obama is an ISIS secret agent, all of which is an embarrassment for our electoral processes and for our country.

If Mr. Trump does lose election–even by a wide margin–will he have the decency to concede the election to Secretary Clinton? He fails to do so he may shred the social contract established by the founders of our republic and maintained throughout American history. Our social contract relies on a deep respect for the common good as well as the belief that we must adhere to democratic principles. In our social contract, we accept the people’s mandate–no matter the outcome–and ideally work together to fashion a more perfect union. These principles are the foundation of our society. They create a sense of order. They promise a better future for our children and grandchildren. Without the social contract, we slip into the fetid swap of dysfunction, chaos and disorder.

As my fellow anthropologists well know, the social contract is fragile. The social order is vulnerable to the fears that despots like to spread. No one knows what will happen in November. It hard to predict what Mr. Trump might do if he, in fact, loses the election. Will he contest the election on the grounds of his fantasies and try to destroy our social contract? Will the media finally decide to ignore his ranting and condemn him to obscurity he deserves?

Time will tell.

Although the social contract may appear to be fragile it has weathered many storms at sea, and I would like to think that just as my fishing boat tossed and turned its way back to calmer waters, so we, too, will once again renew our social contract and slowly move forward toward a better tomorrow.

Shaken by the mighty power of rough seas, I managed to steady myself as we returned to the tranquility of the Indian River Inlet. Although the tide was going out to sea, which makes it difficult to catch fish, my friend beat the odds and unexpectedly caught a large flounder, which we brought home for a delicious dinner.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.