Illustration by Sabahat Ahmad

As a half-Pakistani person, I often cozied up on the couch for Bollywood movie nights with my family growing up. These nights were more than a tradition—they were a rite of passage. I’m a fair-skinned South Asian, and this was a way for me to connect to my culture when I didn’t necessarily present as such on the outside. I idolized the actresses in these movies, awkwardly shaking my preteen hips and listening to soundtracks of films like Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and Aśoka on my CD player days later.

I first visited Toronto in 2015, when I was 24. I came to heal from a bad breakup in my hometown of New York City. A year later, I met my now-husband and fell for him immediately, permanently moving to Canada. He also has a South Asian background, and it made me feel less homesick to experience the comfort of Bollywood nights with my in-laws. We’d throw in our own sassy commentary, poking fun at the soapy love scenes and dramatic dance routines while being enamoured by them at the same time.

My move to Canada was not only out of love for my husband, but love for the city. Toronto has a massive South Asian population (nearly 385,000 as of 2021). It’s also the place with the highest number of South Asians in Canada. In Scarborough, where I live, our cultures are celebrated like nowhere else I’ve been in North America. Despite growing up in a place as diverse as New York, I’d never experienced such a normalized and integrated Indian and Pakistani culture, with aunties walking around in saris and Desi aromas like masala wafting through the streets. As a result, Bollywood carries some heft as a mainstream art form here, and a more diverse range of Bollywood and South Asian films are more present on Canadian Netflix than they are in the States. It’s heartwarming to see the classics of my childhood not just in their own dedicated section but in Netflix’s most-watched films, validating and serving the viewing preferences of the population.

But in the decades between the beloved films of my childhood and Bollywood movies today, not much has changed. The very same thing that brought me comfort is also holding us back as a culture. Only years later, as we watched these movies with my husband’s nieces, did I fully understand the unrealistic beauty standards they presented. European aesthetics are put on a pedestal, and actresses are cast accordingly, sending the message to young South Asian girls that fair means beautiful. As I watched my nieces regularly straighten their gorgeous curls, I reflected on the fact that the wide range of beautiful South Asian women is and was often underrepresented onscreen.

In Canada, these same issues of colourism and racism persist despite the country being globally recognized as a place where all cultures can thrive and coexist harmoniously. This shows us just how pervasive British colonialism remains in India and beyond. In searches for Canadian Bollywood actresses online, starlets like Sunny Leone, Nora Fatehi and Lisa Ray are the first three to pop up. This is in part because they’re the most popular, but it’s no coincidence that they also have fair skin and European features. It makes me feel as though darker-skinned South Asian women are set up for failure. I worry that young Canadian girls like my nieces will inherit these Eurocentric beauty standards, negatively impacting their self-esteem and making them want to fit into an unrealistic mould rather than appreciating what makes them so unique.

In January 2024, I read that Ed Westwick (everyone’s favorite toxic drama king from Gossip Girl) was marrying a Bollywood actress named Amy Jackson. She looked suspiciously Western to me, and with the name Amy Jackson, I knew I had to dive deeper. Was this the case of a name change or something more? She could have been racially ambiguous; as someone who is overtly conscious about being perceived as fully white when I’m not, I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. I saw the dark hair, olive skin, and light eyes not unlike my own and assumed she must also be of mixed-race heritage. But after a not-so-deep dive online, I discovered that she was, in fact, an English-speaking, British white woman who was somehow ludicrously popular in Bollywood films. I had the same moment of disconnect when watching one of my favorite shows a few years back, Made in Heaven, and discovering that one of the actresses, Kalki Koechlin, was also a Caucasian woman, despite being raised in India and speaking Hindi, which has helped her fit in when she takes on these roles.

In the past, South Asian actresses who passed as white were showcased and picked first. Today, it’s enough to be white and speak the language. I don’t even think I would mind if these actresses openly acknowledged their skin tone. But the fact that it remains hidden and requires some digging begs the question: is this Brownface Lite? Is it cultural appropriation? Or is it okay if these women were raised in Indian culture and consider India their home? It’s tricky to know where to draw the line.

I’m not trying to downplay the acting skills of talented, lighter-skinned South Asian women. It’s their right to take up space in their industry of choice. But I do find it troubling that these light-skinned and white women skyrocket to fame with such ease and are sought out by directors and producers in Bollywood while thousands of talented actresses with South Asian heritage are cast aside.

Bollywood has a history of giving priority to lighter-skinned actresses, and it perpetuates the harmful side effects of the caste system in South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Skin-lightening creams are frequently advertised in India by major stars like Shah Rukh Khan, and it’s always seemed gross to me.

These messages are already too strong in South Asian culture. I attribute much of that to the brainwashing of the British Raj, which dates back to the 1850s, nailing in the mentality that if you have Eurocentric features and traits, you’re bound to succeed. These sentiments are still fully normalized and accepted.

Anyone who watched Indian Matchmaker has probably heard the bevy of problematic things the show’s star, Sima Aunty, has said, often lauding lighter-skinned people as a great catch just because they’re “fair.” She would prioritize women that fit that colourist Bollywood aesthetic for many of the show’s eligible bachelors. My own fair-skinned grandmother would use the slur “kala,” a derogatory term referring to dark-skinned people. In contrast, as someone who is often perceived as fully white, I’ve been called “gori” which refers to a light-skinned or white girl. I’ve always hated this dichotomy. I’ve heard people within my community freely comment on the skin tone of children. This widely accepted language creates a hierarchy and promotes problematic beauty standards—whether it’s meant as a compliment or a passive-aggressive criticism—and it affects children, subconsciously or not.

It feels grotesque for billion-dollar industries like Bollywood to profit off the commodification of white faces in distinctly brown roles. It screams, “brown women, this is what we want of you. This is how you can be seen as a woman.” As if darker-skinned women with distinctly South Asian features are not equally worthy of earning a “vixen” role or being picked out in a crowded audition room.

If Bollywood showed women who represent the full spectrum of South Asian beauty, it would have a global impact, expanding beauty standards in South Asia and beyond. It would improve the self-confidence of women and girls while challenging the outdated norms of colourism and even make the worlds of beauty and fashion more inclusive, making way for a more empowered female population, which we need more than ever on a global scale.

While it might seem like not much has changed, we’re moving in a more positive direction. In Canada, I see hope in talented Canadian stars like Rekha Sharma, Kamal Sidhu, Uppekha Jain, and Parveen Kaur. It’s no surprise that Canada is leading the charge in showing the many forms that brown beauty can take beyond a skinny nose and pale skin, which will hopefully create a ripple effect in other countries.

Brown women will always remain at the heart of Bollywood, and if, as audiences, we can start to acknowledge how women internalize what they see onscreen, we can start to consciously change both the everyday lexicon we use to discuss beauty and the narratives we craft.

Photo by Timothy Vollmer

“This industry is corrupt,” Lisa Milne, owner of The Royal Theatre in Trail, B.C. (population 7,920), told me, referring to the film exhibition industry in Canada, before I’d even been able to start recording our interview. She was, seemingly, dying to say it.

“The studios don’t listen to us,” she continued. “In the 15 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve had many conversations with [the studios] as high up as I can go, and they basically say, ‘Well, Lisa, that’s the way it is.’ There’s no reason why. There’s no discussion about doing anything different.”

Independent movie theatres in Canada are struggling. It may seem like common sense given streaming convenience, but the problems go much deeper than competition from Netflix. It’s in the frustrating DNA of Canada’s unique, and uniquely constricting, film exhibition ecosystem.

In March, the Network of Independent Canadian Exhibitors (NICE), a new alliance of cinemas, festivals, programmers, and other advocates, released a stunning report on the state of film exhibition in the country. After surveying 67 NICE members across Canada, the report concluded that about 60 percent were operating at a loss at the end of their most recent fiscal year. At a moment when roughly 34 percent of the report’s respondents say their theatre is the only cultural option in their community, the threat of closures is stark. But the story runs deeper: from the domination of Cineplex to changing audience habits, small theatres across Canada are struggling to survive.

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Theatres book studios’ films through distributors, and bookers at those distributors let theatres know if the films are available. It’s at this stage that troubles for indie theatres can start. For owners like Milne, particularly those whose theatres have just a single screen, studio mandates called clean runs present serious problems. This means a theatre must dedicate their screen to only one film, to the exclusion of all others, every single showtime. For a large multiplex with 10 or more screens, dedicating a screen to a single film is no big deal. Theatres with one screen, though, “can’t serve their community the way that they would like to,” says NICE secretary Sonya William.

A recent example, Deadpool & Wolverine, took the problem to new heights for Milne. She says Disney demanded, as is typical, an exclusive run for three weeks, followed by a fourth week that would be determined according to metrics unknown to Milne but communicated via her booker—if it did “well enough,” she would be forced to show it another week. “Not only do they not tell you what [well enough] is, they block you from booking a movie on that held fourth week,” she says.

In a new twist, however, her booker told her that the same would now hold true for a fifth week. Essentially, Disney demanded all future weeks be held for them “until they determine if their film comes off my screen,” Milne says. “I’ve never had this happen.”

While it’s intensified lately, this is a long-standing practice that not only hurts single-screen cinemas, but, as William put it, Canadian culture as a whole, including opportunities for domestic artists. “If a cinema has to show the same film over and over and over again, most likely not a Canadian film, that means there’s not a single showtime that can go to this local filmmaker with a smaller title,” she says. These may not sell as many tickets, but would nevertheless bring out an audience and be able to build recognition and growth.

The other major obstacle for smaller theatres is zoning. In practical terms, Cineplex instructs distributors not to send films to nearby independent theatres until Cineplex is done showing them. Even if the closest Cineplex is several kilometres away, a small theatre may still be considered to be within a Cineplex zone. As a result, local independent theatres can’t show new releases until months later. What may seem like bad programming is, in fact, due to zoning policies, sometimes called the radius clause, that lack transparency but are nevertheless aggressively enforced. It’s not clear how far the radius extends. These are unwritten rules about unseen and always-shifting zone maps that get unilaterally imposed on these theatres by Cineplex and by distributors. The rules can change at any time, and theatre owners don’t have paper trails. Several small theatre owners who spoke to This Magazine drew attention to this problem, and so did NICE.

Cineplex’s role in Canada is, without a doubt, a monopoly. It runs 158 theatres with over 1,630 screens, and it controls approximately 75 percent of domestic box office. By contrast, no one company in the U.S., the UK, or Australia controls more than 30 percent, and they have all had organizations like NICE for many years. William says the length of time it took for NICE to be created signifies just how tough the Canadian indie film scene is. It began in a grassroots way in 2018 via an online discussion board, and the group intensified their efforts during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Once they started seriously organizing in 2020, though, Cineplex was squarely in their crosshairs, and zoning is a key reason—even though it’s no longer necessary.

Zones originated with the production of 35 millimetre film prints, which were expensive and resource-heavy, and were introduced as a way to control production and maintain competition between cinemas within a geographic region. Two things have happened: digital prints negate most of the practical challenges, and Cineplex came to completely dominate the theatrical landscape, which, William told me, “really means that the competition originally suggested with the zoning rule is now gone.” Kiana Reeves, manager at The Vic Theatre in Victoria, B.C., says that because of the radius clause, they would never know week-to-week what they’d be able to show. The uncertainty can cause distrust from customers, who are left unsure of what the theatre can or will offer. Instead, it’s always promising an amorphous “coming soon.” As a result, she says, “by the time we do get it, it might be six weeks later, and everyone that meant to see it already has.”

Fatima Allie Dobrowolski, owner of the Plaza Theatre in Calgary, has the same problem. To the confusion of many at the time, she purchased the Plaza in 2021 during lockdowns, after scrolling on Instagram while in London, England and seeing it was for sale. She became determined to make sure the space would continue to exist as intended, confident that theatres would reopen and thrive again. One first step, after admitting to some naïveté, was confronting the radius clause. She built a cafe in the theatre, so the establishment doesn’t have to rely on selling tickets. While the Plaza does have many loyal customers who prefer to watch movies in the historic and newly renovated space, it still bewilders Dobrowolski “why there isn’t room for Cineplex and this little independent with one screen to also show [a film].”

Dobrowolski’s sentiment is widespread. “You’re not going to find anyone who works on this level of cinema who has much of a kind word to say about how we are all waiting in line behind them and how we’re treated as a result,” Scott Hamilton, programmer at The Broadway Theatre in Saskatoon, says. Many referred to Cineplex as a “bully,” strong-arming audiences and smaller theatres alike just because they can. In early 2023, an episode of Canadaland “Commons” featured an executive from a movie distribution company who commented anonymously about how Cineplex exerts its power, stating, “because of Cineplex’s enormous market share, no independent film distribution company can afford to do anything that Cineplex might perceive as going against its interests” out of fear that Cineplex would decide to simply stop screening that distributor’s films, a risk these companies cannot take.

Cineplex refused This Magazine’s request for an interview, and did not speak to the zoning or exclusivity policies. In a statement to This Magazine, Cineplex’s vice president of communications Michelle Saba said: “Cineplex does not own the rights to the movies that appear on our screens – we license them from distributors to play in our theatres. It is up to film distributors to decide where they play their films.” According to NICE and theatre owners, this is the company’s typical line of defence: putting blame on the distributors, while obfuscating the reality that the company’s market dominance essentially means that the distributors have no choice but to play by their rules.

Some theatres have resolved to work around the issue by almost entirely avoiding new releases. Hamilton told me about their chaotic programming, as the space also regularly hosts music and other events, which means “I am never able to offer an entire week’s run unbroken to any title no matter what the title is.” Instead, they show all kinds of older or repertory films, and the diversity of options seems to be working. “Our film numbers are actually going up,” he says, “and we’re doing that with less screening time, and that’s from more dynamic programming.” This means selecting unexpected films and turning them into an event worth leaving the house for—just one way small theatres are getting creative to try to survive.

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It’s Friday night, and you want to relax after a tough week with a movie—are you going to the theatre, or staying in the comfort of your own living room? Debates about theatres have tended to centre on the threat posed by streaming. Surprisingly, every theatre owner I spoke to says this is hardly their main concern, and a problem somewhat straightforwardly answered through better programming.

For Hamilton, even keeping his loyal audience coming back is a challenge. Like others, he’s doing this by eventizing screenings like never before—coming up with added value to turn the movie into an event, as in the case of always-raucous The Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings. Other strategies programmers use include inviting filmmakers, creating a specialty cocktail inspired by the film, or in a recent example to accompany a screening of Napoleon Dynamite, selling fresh tater tots.

Corinne Lea, owner of the Rio Theatre in Vancouver, acknowledges that at the very least, “the one byproduct that’s been good is that Cineplex has kind of forced us to be really creative.”

Eventizing, alongside expanding how we think of theatre spaces, has come naturally to some and less so to others. “We’re a very busy rental hall: weddings, live events, we’ve done wakes,” Hamilton says. “Other people are [becoming] multi-use venues by way of trying to stay open, and we were doing this before we had to.” That scrappiness and community spirit is a common characteristic, though. “It’s the volunteers and the patrons who come through when we need them,” Reeves says about the Vic diehards, “helping me paint, giving us supplies. They feel a real ownership over the space.”

Still, it’s a struggle to make ends meet. So what’s the solution? NICE and theatre owners have advocated for increases in public funding for small theatres. But even this would be welcome if insufficient, many theatre owners say, a short term band-aid for a long-term problem. Instead, they argued, governments must get more aggressive. “The government is the one that needs to stop Cineplex,” Lea says. “You can’t expect a for-profit monopoly to police themselves; you need government regulations in place.”

Unfortunately, the government thus far seems unwilling. Lea says the Rio went to the Competition Bureau, who told her they “don’t see an issue here,” in her words, and dismissed the case. In a statement, Sarah Brown, the Bureau’s senior communications advisor, says: “As the Bureau is obligated by law to conduct its work confidentially, it would be inappropriate to comment on specific issues in the marketplace. I am also unable confirm [sic] whether or not we are or will be investigating this matter or to speculate whether the conduct you described contravenes the Competition Act.”

William points out that the impact of this apparent governmental passivity is especially harsh for rural communities, whose theatres are nevertheless beholden to the same rules as those in cities. “What really breaks my heart,” she says, “is we will probably see closures the most in the rural area cinemas and the communities who really need these places”— not only to see movies, but as multi-use community spaces and cultural hubs. Not having the ability to compete means indie theatres may start disappearing at an alarming rate, leaving cultural gaps in the places they used to call home.

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Smaller theatres, of course, will keep up the pressure, with a commitment to meet the moment. While the specifics vary somewhat according to region (Benjamin Pelletier, programmer at Cinéma Moderne in Montreal, laments that few distributors in North America provide French subtitles, limiting their offerings, while B.C. theatres have been battling for fewer restrictions on serving liquor), there is consensus that things must evolve. “I have to feel like we’re doing something that’s helping grow the community,” Hamilton says, “or else I wouldn’t be interested in doing this. It’s too much stress.”

“Imagine there’s no independent theatres left, and there’s only the monopolies, what does that look like? How is that going to change film?” Lea asks, noting how industrial norms impact the medium itself. Milne, the Royal owner, puts it even more bluntly. “What hurts me as a human and as a business is not being able to cater to everybody in my community, how I know that they deserve to be catered to,” she says. “We need help fixing this broken system.”

Art by Valerie Thai

Ronnie Riley learned through social media that their first novel was facing censorship. Riley was scrolling late one evening when they saw what appeared to be a leaked school memo. Their middle-grade book about a non-binary pre-teen named Jude was one of four 2SLGBTQIA+ books that Ontario’s Waterloo Catholic District School Board was trying to get out of students’ hands.

The book wasn’t explicitly banned, but there were enough hurdles for kids to access the novel that Danny Ramadan, the chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada, called the decision a “shadow ban” in an interview with the Toronto Star. (Ramadan’s book Salma Writes a Book, part of his children’s series about a young immigrant, was also challenged by the school board.)

Riley, whose work so far is most prominent in the Canadian children’s literary scene, says that while they anticipated having some issues in the U.S., it’s difficult to acknowledge that Canada is not immune to book bans. “In the States…they’re more vocal,” Riley says. “But I do believe that it’s happening in Canada, just very quietly.”

Advocacy groups in the U.S.—Parents’ Rights in Education, Citizens Defending Freedom and Moms for Liberty are three of the most vocal organizations—represent a growing trend of censorship there. By re-framing language as advocating for parental rights rather than literary censorship, groups like these have been able to successfully ban books. This harms children by suppressing their ability to access information, though advocacy groups often claim that they’re trying to protect children from explicit and inappropriate materials. And, though in its characteristically slower, slightly quieter way, the same has been happening in Canada, with an increase in book ban requests here in recent years.

It’s not just these authors’ books that are at risk. Without them, children have fewer opportunities to learn about other people and customs, and about themselves. Children’s education and exposure to different ways of life are under threat, and public libraries may be, too.

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In the U.S., recent data from the American Library Association (ALA) found that “[books] targeted for censorship at public libraries grew by 92 percent from 2022 to 2023,” and “47 percent of challenged materials represent the voices and experiences of those in the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC community.” In Texas, 578 books were banned in the 2021-22 school year, 424 in Pennsylvania, and 401 in Florida.

Moms For Liberty, a so-called parental rights group that reports having over 130,000 members, has often made the news due to its continuous calls to ban children’s books in libraries and schools across the country. In July 2023, they were successful in getting five books banned across Leon County schools in Tallahassee, Florida. The books had characters dealing with HIV, sexual assault, leukemia, and life after death.

While parental calls to ban books aren’t always successful, the ones that are can set off a political ripple effect for other parts of the country. “What we know to be true in several states is that they’ve been following each other in a race to the bottom about how many books you can ban in how many different ways,” says John Chrastka, executive director and founder of EveryLibrary, a non-profit political action organization focused on fighting book bans in the U.S.

Chrastka references data from the Unpacking 2023 Legislation of Concern for Libraries report, created by EveryLibrary to examine the status of bills in the U.S. aiming to censor access to books in both school and public libraries. Chrastka says that EveryLibrary was able to track that some bills, despite being in different states, were using the same language as one another to ban books. “That cut and paste job—that copycat—is sometimes very explicit,” he says. “And sometimes it’s based on the intent of the law: how can we make it easier to call a book criminal, call a book obscene, call a book harmful?”

There’s a clear “feedback loop,” Chrastka says, between groups like Moms For Liberty and politicians when it comes to banning books, meaning that citizen organizations and political leaders are influencing each other. “It is a witch’s brew of interest groups that are utilizing a fairly soft target—public libraries—which are intended to be, under law, under Supreme Court precedent, public forums, and the materials are available for all—as long as they’re legal,” he says. “If you can say that those books about those human beings are obscene or criminal or harmful, you can make an attack on those populations by proxy, whether it’s LGBTQ or Black and Brown communities.”

When libraries refuse to remove books from their shelves, parents sometimes push to remove their funding altogether in retaliation. Chrastka says that while not every library will lose funding from continuing to stock challenged books, there have been and continue to be states where this is the case. In Alabama, a legislative code change, enacted this past May, made $6.6 million in state funding for public libraries contingent on their compliance with the Alabama Public Library Service Board’s guidelines about restricting access to books deemed inappropriate for certain ages.

This isn’t just happening in southern states. In Michigan, the Patmos Library nearly lost 84 percent of its funding after the town’s residents voted twice that taxpayer money shouldn’t support the library as long as it continued to supply 2SLGBTQIA+ books. But library staff would not remove the books, and after a third vote, the library will remain open.

When asked whether parental requests for libraries to censor 2SLGBTQIA+ materials could lead to budget concerns, the ALA told This Magazine in a written statement that while they don’t have national data to validate this correlation, they felt this outcome was unlikely: “Although it is challenging to quantify, these incidents emphasize the ongoing importance of defending libraries as vital community resources,” the statement reads.

As Chrastka says, though, “This is not a casual social interaction. This is a political movement.” It’s a movement that’s travelling north of the border, and in an unprecedented way.

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Fully banning a book in Canada is a tough task, and it’s not always clear how it can be done. Public libraries, though funded by municipalities, are run by independent boards which have jurisdiction over the contents of their shelves. Libraries usually respond to disputes by following their challenge policies or request for reconsideration policies. In Canadian schools, the process for vetting books often involves the board developing selection methods through training with librarians, and then trusting librarians to implement those methods. Curricula are set by provinces, and teachers decide how best to meet the curricula. It’s not the role of school boards to police individual books, though parents sometimes appeal to them in attempts to bypass any formal selection and reconsideration processes that boards entrust librarians to follow. When these policies do not exist—and they often don’t—it’s often board members and administrators who end up handling the issue and responding to parental pressures.

Shadowbanning, though, is easier to accomplish. It can include what happened to Riley, where their book was moved to a shelf inaccessible by students and “a teacher must provide the Catholic context” before students are allowed to borrow the book. Basically, citizens and school districts are finding other ways to get books out of people’s hands rather than outright banning them. In the words of Fin Leary, the program manager at We Need Diverse Books, a nonprofit organization focused on making the publishing industry more diverse, the goal is to “not have them seen as often.” He says it’s much harder to fight this kind of censorship.

Regardless of whether or not a book is challenged in a public library or a school, book bans affect both readers and authors. A November 2023 statement from the Ontario Library Association said that a diverse representation of books helps students “learn how to navigate differences and develop critical awareness of their environments.” The largest worry, according to Canadian School Libraries, is that groups calling for censorship in the U.S. will continue to inspire Canadians to use similar organization tactics.

According to data from the Canadian Library Challenges Database (CLCD), Canadian libraries facing the most calls for censorship are the Edmonton Public Library (143 requests), the Ottawa Public Library (127 requests) and the Toronto Public Library (101 requests). While the database has information from as early as 1998, some libraries have only reported censorship requests from recent years.

Michael Nyby, the chair of the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the Canadian Federation of Library Associations, said in an article published on Freedom To Read’s website that library challenges from September 2002 to August 2023 represent the highest number ever recorded in Canada in a twelve-month period. According to data from the CLCD, books and events with 2SLGBTQIA+ content made up 38 percent of all challenges in 2022. (Between 2015 to 2021, less than 10 percent of all challenges were connected to 2SLGBTQIA+ matters.) Books surrounding sexual content (19 percent) and racism (16 percent) made up the next highest percentages. The influence of library censorship in the U.S. also extends to books on drug use, abuse, violence, grief, and death.

Though Riley’s novel’s shadow ban was overturned after public outcry, concerns about a rise in book censorship in Canada, and calls to defund in the event that it doesn’t happen, aren’t without reason. At the Prairie Rose School Division (PRSD), a Manitoba-based school board, 11 requests for books to be banned were made in just 2023. Among them were 2SLGBTQIA+ books like Juno Dawson’s This Book is Gay. Dawson, who spent seven years working as a sex-ed teacher, described the nonfiction book as “essentially a textbook.” Each chapter of the book focuses on a different aspect of queer life, including definitions of 2SLGBTQIA+ identities, the history of HIV/AIDS, and sex. The book also addresses the importance of queer dating apps and using sexual protection. According to the PRSD, parents proposed banning this book (among multiple others) for reasons of pornography— though the book teaches children about bodies, and is not pornography. The school board said there was “some connection with the Concerned Citizens Canada Twitter account,” but not whether the parents proposing the ban were part of the group, which self-describes as “addressing sexually explicit materials being made available to children in our public libraries.” Still, the group’s account falsely tweeted that This Book is Gay was encouraging minors to solicit sex from adults on Grindr. The school board did not end up removing Dawson’s book (or the others proposed in the ban), but Concerned Citizens Canada is just one of many social and political groups that continue to advocate for book censorship.

In the summer of 2022, Manitoba’s South Central Regional Library was also pressured to remove three books about puberty and consent from shelves. Residents protested a library board meeting, flooded city council meetings, and said public library funding should be removed if the books weren’t, calling them “child pornography.” However, both Cathy Ching, the library services director, and local city councillor Marvin Plett both denied these claims. “Calling books pornographic does not make it so,” Plett said at a Winkler council meeting in July 2023. “Censuring books based on content that some find objectionable can have far-reaching and unintended implications.”

Around the same time, in Chilliwack, B.C., the RCMP were called to investigate after books there were reported for alleged child pornography in schools, too. Also in 2023, library picture books about gender in Red Deer, Alberta were vandalized. A page about using a singular “they” pronoun for nonbinary people was ripped out, according to a news report from the Red Deer Advocate.

Though the case in Chilliwack was dismissed and the books in Red Deer were replaced, parents’ calls to defund the Manitoba library if certain books aren’t removed echoes bills proposed by American lawmakers stressing that libraries should lose funding if bans aren’t enacted. And while books aren’t being overtly removed from shelves in Canada very often, there are other, sometimes more insidious impacts this attitude is having on queer and racialized youth.

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The Toronto Public Library (TPL) is Canada’s largest public library system. When asked about whether groups like those in the U.S. seeking to defund libraries for not removing 2SLGBTQIA+ material could affect what happens in Toronto, the media team at TPL said in an emailed statement that its budget is not affected by these groups. “We are governed by a library board and while our budget is ultimately approved by City Council, our materials selection is governed by our Board policies,” the email reads.

TPL’s Intellectual Freedom Challenges – 2023 Annual Report states that none of the requests to remove books from its shelves were successful that year. However, the same report also acknowledges that there are other issues at play. “TPL has experienced objections to 2SLGBTQ+ content outside of the formal request for reconsideration process, with opposition to Drag Queen Story Time programs at five branches and protests at three of them; damage to Progress Pride decals at eight branches; vandalized Pride Celebration displays at two branches; and vandalized 2SLGBTQ+ books at one branch.”

Historical book banning represents violence and censorship. Current book bans, though they may be disguised as parental rights, are more of the same. Vandalism of Pride displays at TPL is another form of violence, and while it may not be physical in nature, it has lasting effects that can harm queer youth for years beyond the act itself.

Banning queer and trans people’s books sends the message that these folks shouldn’t exist, at least not publicly. Ideas like these contribute to the state of widespread violence against them. Recent data from Statistics Canada found that around two thirds of 2SLGBTQIA+ Canadians had experienced physical or sexual violence. However, this number could be much higher: data from the same report found that around 80 percent of physical assaults against this group within the year prior to the survey didn’t “[come] to the attention of the police.”

Many 2SLGBTQIA+ people also struggle with feelings of suicidality. In the U.S., data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 29 percent of trans youth have attempted suicide. In Canada, researchers at the University of Montreal and Egale Canada reported that 36 percent of trans people in Ontario experience feelings of suicidal ideation. Systemic discrimination, erasure, and invalidation contributes to this, and book banning is part of this wider package of behaviours that harms the community.

Canadian author Robin Stevenson was interviewed for PEN Canada about her children’s rhyming picture books, Pride Colors and Pride Puppy!, being targeted by the recent wave of book censorship in the U.S. and Canada. “Book banners say that they want to protect children, but they are doing real harm to the very children they claim to protect,” Stevenson said, explaining that “learning to hate yourself was far more dangerous than any book could ever be.”

Leary says that removing these types of books from libraries can send a message to publishers: if they notice that titles aren’t making it to school libraries or are banned, it could discourage them from publishing and promoting them. “As much as the book bans are horrifying, they also are so much scarier when you consider the larger context of why they’re happening—because it’s to legislate folks out of existence, or to legislate folks out of having an education about these topics.”

*

Representation matters because it helps reduce stereotypes. Books with diverse representation are vital. They can help teach empathy and understanding, while also showing readers that they aren’t alone in their experiences. Diverse books also teach a fuller picture of history, sharing stories previously overlooked. They are a key aspect of a well-rounded education.

While it is a terrifying moment for queer and racialized writers, authors are not silencing themselves as a result of the pushback. Protecting their work from the possibility of being banned, though, will take a concerted effort on the part of anyone hoping to support them.

Riley believes that the shadow ban of their novel at the Waterloo Catholic District School Board was only overturned because of statements from not only their publisher, but other authors as well. They say they had a sound support system, and that helped.

That kind of unified support is crucial to fostering an environment that permits the continuation of freedom in publishing. Leary says that from an advocacy standpoint, parents opposing book censorship have the most power when they stick together. “Our voices are stronger when we are collectively organizing, and it also kind of allows parents to have each other to lean on,” he says. One way to do this is by communicating with school board members and going to community meetings that include opportunities to speak to these issues.

Riley keeps their final advice to anyone passionate about this issue simple and blunt. “Keep speaking out,” they say. “Keep making sure that books get into the hands of kids—especially queer books.”

Illustration by Valerie Thai

Bob’s Burgers keeps getting better. Loren Bouchard’s animated sitcom, now in its 15th season on FOX, is bigger-hearted and far more ambitious than when it first aired in 2011. It has the kind of confidence that can only emerge, I imagine, when a project that starts out with tepid-to-terrible reviews goes on to receive years of critical praise and multi-season renewals. A critic at the Washington Post once dismissed Bob’s Burgers as “derivatively dull,” and wrote that “somewhere, once again, Fred Flintstone weeps.” The show has since inspired a film, a cookbook, a comic book series, and perhaps inevitably, the porn parody Bob’s Boners (2014).

For the uninitiated: Bob’s Burgers is about a family running a struggling burger restaurant in a fictional New Jersey beach town. The Belchers are an eccentric bunch. There’s deadpan, pessimistic Bob (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin); his spirited wife Linda (John Roberts); Tina, their nerdy teen, obsessed with boys and horses (Dan Mintz); Gene, the flamboyant middle child (Eugene Mirman); and mischievous nine-year-old Louise (Kristen Schaal). The characters dive into all sorts of hijinks and adventures to keep their restaurant afloat— like participating in a water balloon battle to counter a neighbourhood rent hike—and always return to the status quo in the well-loved tradition of long-running, episodic adult animation.

Except Bob’s Burgers isn’t The Simpsons or South Park. Yes, the writing can be gross and edgy—the pilot includes a recurring bit about Tina’s itchy crotch—but it softens. Below the toilet humour lies a tender heart. It’s what makes Bob’s Burgers spark: its ability to balance absurdity with genuine emotion, and to explore existential questions, like what we owe the dead, with tremendous wit and pathos. “I am a terrible son and a terrible person,” Bob says in season 13, after spending a day trying to find his mother’s grave, which he hasn’t visited in two decades. (Meanwhile, Tina wonders whether it’s rude to pick a wedgie in a cemetery. Gene’s reply: “I think it’s rude not to.”) But in the episode’s emotional climax, Linda tells Bob that his mother would be proud of him. “Look what you’ve done with the restaurant, with this family,” she says, then adds, quickly: “Tina, take your hand out of your butt.”

Like the Simpsons, the Belchers are frozen in time—a fate that’s particularly brutal for 13-year-old Tina, forever trapped in puberty—even as the sitcom clearly cycles through the seasons, marked by holiday-centric episodes. Still, the characters evolve. Socially awkward Tina becomes more confident in her budding sexuality. When a classmate threatens to share her “erotic friend fiction” (secret, sexy stories she writes about her peers) with the whole school, Tina decides to read it to everyone herself. (Her motto: “I’m a smart, strong, sensual woman.”) Early Louise is almost demonic—in season one’s “Sexy Dance Fighting,” she tells Tina she should kill herself. Gleefully, no less! But over a dozen seasons later, we see a more vulnerable side to her character. In season 13’s “What About Job?” Louise spirals out about her future: “What if I grow up and I just am not really anything cool or exciting? What if I’m just a boring-life person?” It’s a gut-punch of an episode. Silly and resonant in equal parts, it marks the series’ gradual shift from a darker, more abrasive tone to something heartfelt and oddly profound. Over time, Bob’s Burgers has positioned itself in a realm that many critics take for granted: the airy, earnest, slice-of-life comedy. TV that is far removed from the stream of reboots, tense dramas, and dramedies that still command the most cultural authority.

Season 14’s standout, “The Amazing Rudy,” pivots away from the Belcher family for the first time. The story follows Louise’s classmate, a recurring character known as Regular- Sized Rudy (Brian Huskey), as he attends a “we’re-still-a-family dinner” with his divorced parents and their new partners. It casts the Belchers as minor characters—they first appear a quarter of the way through, in the background, bickering about whether to steal coins from a mall fountain, while Rudy tries on hats at a kiosk called “Better Off Head.” (Bob’s Burgers is reliably—and delightfully—heavy on wordplay.) The episode is funny and melancholic, scored to wistful piano melodies and Stevie Wonder, like a less-cynical BoJack Horseman. There’s a montage of past family dinners, each one showing Rudy’s parents sitting farther apart. There’s a tragicomic scene in a carwash, where Rudy’s father can’t tell Rudy he loves him without the whirring machines drowning him out. And there are moments that align us with Rudy, like when he watches the Belchers from a distance, drawn to their supportive, close-knit dynamic—a nod to Bob’s Burgers’ secret sauce, the key to its enduring charm.

“The Amazing Rudy” proves that after 262 episodes, Bob’s Burgers can do whatever the hell it wants. It can experiment with tone and perspective. It can arrange a Philip Glass song for Gene’s all-xylophone band in a way that brings me to tears. It can cast comedy superstars, from Paul Rudd to Patti Harrison. And it can channel the quiet, emotional ambition of children’s television, where animated shows like Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Hilda, Dead End, The Owl House, Summer Camp Island, and Infinity Train have often delivered more affecting and complex storytelling than adult animation over the last decade. (A few exceptions: BoJack Horseman, of course; Pantheon; A24’s Hazbin Hotel, and HBO’s terrific Harley Quinn.)

Among that company, Bob’s Burgers stands out for its remarkable longevity. Television has long been a cutthroat arena. The landscape has felt especially unstable since the Great Streaming Panic of 2022—courtesy of Wall Street—when services like Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max became more selective about renewals, and less willing to nurture shows finding their groove. (Many also removed media from their libraries to cut costs, making a casualty of animated gems like Infinity Train and Summer Camp Island.) A new kind of Comfort Show has emerged: the rare series that gets regular renewals in a painfully commercialized industry. The survival of Bob’s Burgers is a small marvel; that the series continues to surprise and delight viewers, year after year, is an argument for patience. For giving writers time to experiment. For sticking with a TV world as it unfolds and evolves. For playing the long game—despite all the odds.

In the season six episode “Sliding Bobs,” Tina, Gene, and Louise imagine how different life would be if Bob didn’t have a moustache when he first met Linda. Would Bob and Linda have ended up together? Would their family still exist? When Tina panics at the thought that life is ruled by chaos and randomness, not fate, Linda tries to comfort her: “Everything is random, but that’s what makes life so wonderful. Sometimes, all the crap in the universe lines up—like that night I met your father. Everything lined up, and it came out Belcher.” We’re so lucky it did.

Photo by Mark Steffens courtesy of Nation Extreme Wrestling

Let’s start with acknowledging the obvious: pro-wrestling is “fake.” I know. The storylines are scripted. The costumes are as beautifully designed as any Broadway production’s. The match outcomes are predetermined. But that doesn’t make what happens any less real for the people who step into the ring. Some of that realness is compounded for wrestlers who identify as members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ and/or racialized communities, for whom the profession hasn’t always offered the safest space.

I’ve been a pro-wrestling fan since childhood, initially as a way to connect with my older male cousins. Since then, my love for the sport has evolved into something very much my own. But in pro-wrestling’s heyday in the late ’90s, a period known amongst fans as the Attitude Era, it seemed to reach its peak of influence in the pop culture zeitgeist. It was hard to avoid The Rock or Stone Cold Steve Austin’s image; and I challenge you to go back in time to any elementary school then and find a kid who wasn’t doing the infamous “Suck it” gesture on the playground.

In 2002, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the world’s most popular promotion at the time, portrayed a romantic relationship between Billy Gunn and Chuck Palumbo. The storyline was initially praised as depicting the 2SLGBTQIA+ community positively on national television. Things ended badly, however, when it was later revealed that it was all a publicity stunt orchestrated by the company. Billy and Chuck were not queer at all, but rather two heterosexual male wrestlers.

Not much has been heard about wrestling recently outside of its dedicated fanbase, aside from a few high-profile lawsuits involving violence and men at the top of WWE. But now, it seems the sport is enjoying a resurgence, both in quality and popularity, along with a much-needed realignment in values.

Over two decades after the setup with Palumbo, Gunn is still in the pro-wrestling world, but he’s now with All Elite Wrestling (AEW). So is Anthony Bowens, an openly gay Black wrestler. There was a storyline in 2023 where a female wrestler, Harley Cameron, tried to hit on Bowens. This led to a strong crowd reaction: the audience started chanting “He’s gay! He’s gay!” repeatedly to Cameron. There wasn’t a hint of irony or hate in this moment though. It was pure joy. It was a celebration of Black queer love.

Gunn can be seen grinning during the segment, cheering on the crowd. It felt like a moment of redemption for what he was a part of back in 2002, compared to what he gets to be a part of now. For many wrestling fans, the “He’s gay” chant was a watershed moment. Change has been coming to the world of professional wrestling for a long time. And now it’s finally the sport’s moment to shine.

This shift toward a more progressive environment in the pro-wrestling landscape moved at a sluggish pace at first, but it’s been picking up momentum over the past five years. Malik Melo, a Black professional wrestler from Vancouver, B.C., reflects on his early childhood experiences with the sport: “Growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were mainly cisgender white guys in prominent roles. There was the rare chance of seeing someone who looked like me, with people like Booker T and The Rock, but that was really it.”

Melo currently trains out of Lions Gate Dojo, which prides itself on being an inclusive space for all of its members. “When I started in 2019, it was myself and one other Black wrestler, Shareef Morrow. We really just had to grind it out. Fast forward a few years, there’s a few more of us. It’s still in the single digits, but it’s a different scene and feel now. It’s much more positive; we all know each other and try to connect. It’s great.”

If that much change can happen in the span of five years, it bodes well for the future of the pro-wrestling ring as a stage to showcase Black excellence. And that future might come sooner rather than later with the rising star of Swerve Strickland, a professional wrestler with AEW who just became the promotion’s first African American Heavyweight Champion. Strickland has gotten over (a pro-wrestling term for becoming popular with fans) through portraying himself in a way that is not sugar coated or whitewashed for mainstream audiences. He is simultaneously grounded and extravagant, clever, strong and authentic: he is embodying what Black excellence means to him, from his rap music to his clothing choices. And it’s clearly resonating with fans.

Lions Gate Dojo, where Melo trains, is run by four trainers: Artemis Spencer, Nicole Matthews, Tony Baroni and Billy Suede. Matthews, whose real name is Lindsay Miller, gives some insight on what it was like being a fan of the predominantly male-centric industry when she was younger: “Growing up,” she says, “I didn’t really look for inspiration from women wrestlers because there wasn’t that much on TV.” And you can’t blame her. During this time in the ’90s, women wrestlers were few and far between. And the ones who did make it on air on WWE, then known as WWF? They weren’t even called wrestlers, but Divas, and they wrestled in bra-and-panties matches thinly guised as games of strip poker. It was both wildly popular and wildly objectifying.

Fortunately, in time, there were other promotions that Matthews could look up to. Shimmer, a women’s professional wrestling promotion that started up in 2005, was one of them. “That was my only goal when I started wrestling. I didn’t give a fuck about WWE, I just wanted to get to Shimmer.” Although Shimmer went defunct in November 2021, women wrestlers are no longer subjected to the bra-and-panties match as their only claim to fame. Nyla Rose made history when she became the first openly transgender pro wrestler to sign with a major American promotion in 2019. Other popular wrestlers like Bianca Belair, Jamie Hayter and Mercedes Mone are also paving the way as strong role models for the next generation of women wrestling fans.

Lions Gate Dojo wants to encourage this next generation to step into the ring. “When I started coaching 10 years ago, it wasn’t a very diverse group of people. A lot of times I was the only girl in class; it did not represent the Vancouver demographic at all,” Matthews says. “Now, it’s so much more diverse. It just naturally happened over the past five years.”

The world of pro-wrestling has come a long way from the days of Billy and Chuck’s fake gay wedding and women being forced to work in their undergarments. And while there’s still a long way to go, the future of pro wrestling looks brighter than ever. As an adult fan today, as much as I cherish my childhood memories of the ’90s and its Attitude Era, I’m jealous of the fans who get to come up in the new age of pro wrestling. They’re watching a sport that is now more dynamic, equitable, compelling, and fun.

Sure, some might still call pro wrestling “fake.” But let me tell you: as my husband and I cried tears of joy during the “He’s gay” chant last summer, nothing felt fake about that to me.

My mom told me that once, when I was a toddler, a stranger advised her to sign me up for modelling. My green eyes, medium-light skin, and curly dark brown hair gave me a certain look, they said, which was super in. My mom said no, despite the fact that mixed-race girls like myself were in demand.

Kimora Lee Simmons, who is Black and Asian, began modelling for Chanel when she was just 14 years old. It was the late 1980s, and soon, she was being mentored by Karl Lagerfeld, reportedly the first designer to put a mixed-race model on the Paris runway. Ten years later, she launched her own clothing brand, Baby Phat. It was an instant hit: people weren’t just obsessed with the clothes, but with Simmons herself wearing them down the runway.

By the early 2000s, when my toddler modelling career was put indefinitely on hold, being mixed-race in the industry was applauded: assuming, of course, that you were the right type of mix. Which is to say that your skin could be modified to suit whatever was most marketable at the moment. At the epicentre of this movement was America’s Next Top Model (ANTM), which Simmons would later be featured on as a judge. By the show’s second cycle, contestant April Wilkner’s half-Japanese, half-white race was regularly discussed. It wasn’t the only time race became a point of fashion on the show. The appearance of changing race through makeup and outfits was a challenge in cycle four.

Naima Mora, a mixed model whose background includes Black, Mexican, Native American and Irish, had her skin lightened with makeup and was posed alongside a blonde, blue-eyed toddler. Mora ultimately won the season. Her look echoed the sentiment across the modelling industry and Hollywood in general: it was the latest trend to be able to look at someone and not be able to tell where they were from.

In 2004, the Guardian dubbed this phenomenon Generation EA— ethnically ambiguous. “The fact that you can’t be sure who they are is part of their seductiveness,” casting agent Melanie Ross said in the article. What was attractive or “exotic” about my mom, a white woman from Ontario, or my dad, a Black man from New York, wasn’t something that I would fully grasp until I was a teenager. I didn’t want to be considered exotic or alluring or sexy as a mixed-race child. I wanted to see a family like mine on TV.

In elementary school, I was the only mixed kid. It was isolating: some kids made fun of my curly hair, others accused me of being adopted. Complete strangers would ask “What are you?” without even asking my name. Later, though, it seemed super common. In high school, there were at least three of us in just the school band. By the time I moved to Toronto for university, I had met tons of people who came from mixed backgrounds like mine.

Despite this, and despite growing up seeing that my identity was trendy in modelling, Hollywood tells a different story. The only time I saw a mixed family on TV actually exploring their identity was in a cartoon called American Dragon: Jake Long, and as much as I loved seeing the misadventures of a boy who was half dragon on his mom’s Chinese side, it wasn’t the same. It’s not that there aren’t mixed people on TV or in movies: Mariah Carey, Rashida Jones, Zendaya, Halle Berry, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Keanu Reeves are all examples. They also all have one thing in common: they have lighter complexions, allowing them to weave through roles easier than darker- skinned Black actors.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Viola Davis spoke candidly about not only missing out on jobs because of her darker skin tone, but also how easy it is to get cast in stereotypical roles. “If I wanted to play a mother whose family lives in a low-income neighbourhood and my son was a gang member who died in a drive-by shooting, I could get that made,” she said in the interview. “Let’s be honest. If I had my same features and I were five shades lighter, it would just be a little bit different.”

Colourism—the specific way that skin tone plays into prejudice and discrimination—is perpetuated by the global beauty industry. It acts within the realm of systemic racism: it’s not just that Black people are more likely to experience discrimination and racism, it is that within race, people with darker skin tones are more likely to struggle when compared to other people of colour. As a light-skinned mixed person, I benefit from this system whether I like it or not.

Season five, episode 10 of Black-ish discussed colourism in a way that TV hadn’t seen before. Protagonist Dre Johnson (played by Anthony Anderson), said: “Because we look different, we get discriminated against differently. Like in the case of O.J. [Simpson]. A magazine made his skin look darker to make him seem more villainous.” (That magazine was TIME magazine.)

Black-ish (and its spin-offs), which aired countless episodes focused on racial discrimination, has also been accused of perpetuating colourism itself, partly because of the show’s choice in casting biracial actors in the roles of Dre’s children, while also casting mixed women as the stereotypical exotic love interests.

The casting of mixed actors has sometimes been controversial. In 2016, actress Zoe Saldaña came under fire for her portrayal of Nina Simone in a biopic. Saldaña, mixed with Black and Latina ancestry, was accused of blackface after it was revealed that she was made to darken her skin and wear a prosthetic nose for the role. But at the same time, Saldaña has openly rejected the idea that just because she’s Latina, she can’t also be Black. “There’s no one way to be Black,” she said in an interview with Allure magazine. “I’m Black the way I know how to be.” (She has since apologized for playing the role.)

Saldaña’s words address the complexity of race, something that Hollywood has struggled to grasp. Though it’s common for celebrities to be mixed, they’re almost never cast as such. I would never deny Saldaña’s identity as Black; the issue is that actors aren’t given the opportunity to showcase their complexities in their roles. This contributes to toxic beauty standards of colourism and sends a horrific message, declaring that you’re only as beautiful as your skin’s ability to be marketable to the latest trend. More often than not, the trends involve lighter skin mimicking Eurocentric beauty standards.

In Hollywood, it’s easier to push mixed people into a single box. In Black-ish, the box is Black. For some actors, like Dwayne Johnson, the box depends on the project. His mix of Black and Samoan has allowed him to play roles from ancient Egyptian king (The Scorpion King, 2002) to Greek legend (Hercules, 2014) to Middle Eastern antihero (Black Adam, 2022). But usually, Johnson’s characters don’t have a background where their cultures are discussed, leaving it up to the audience to interpret.

Henry Golding, the British Malaysian star of Crazy Rich Asians, has said people told him that he wasn’t “Asian enough” to play the lead in the movie. “Just because by blood I’m not full Asian doesn’t mean I can’t own my Asianness,” he said in an interview with Bustle. He also said when he played a romantic lead in A Simple Favour alongside Blake Lively—his ideal role— the character’s race wasn’t specified: it was just a character written as a person. “It was never written as an Asian role— it’s never really highlighted that I am an Asian person married to Blake Lively. But that’s what it should be like,” he said.

But what about the mixed-race people who can’t fit comfortably into the ethnically ambiguous box? While actors like Dwayne Johnson and Golding can blend in, there’s more backlash for mixed people who aren’t Hollywood heartthrobs. Names play into casting just as much as skin tone does. Chloe Bennet, who is half white, half Chinese, struggled for years to book acting roles under her birth surname, Wang. The first audition she took after changing her name resulted in a job, she said back in 2016.

To be mixed-race is to be prepared to constantly contradict yourself. It’s always having to repeat yourself when someone accuses you of being too much of one thing or not enough of the other. It’s about never really seeing yourself accurately represented in media because there is no one way to look or be mixed. It’s unfair to say all mixed people in Hollywood should be forced to prioritize one half of their culture while simultaneously trying to prove that the other half exists. Pretending that mixed people aren’t mixed can perpetuate colourism. Dark-skinned Black girls deserve to feel beautiful and see themselves too.

You can’t choose your genetics, but you can choose to call out injustice. Whether we see ourselves reflected in media or not, there are infinite ways to celebrate culture while rejecting the idea that lighter skin is better.

Photo courtesy Kid’s Stuff [Trucs d’enfants]

Gender-neutral clothing is a growing trend in Canadian fashion, and one that is trickling down to the wardrobes of the youngest Canadians.

From chains such as La Tuque, Quebec’s Aubainerie, to small businesses such as Vancouver’s Pley Clothes, options for parents looking to build their children a genderless closet are growing across the country. Brands appear to be thriving in Canada’s larger cities and fashion hubs, including Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.

Ideas of gendered children’s clothing have been evolving since the 19th century, when pastel colours for children came into fashion. Some historians say the idea of “pink for girls, blue for boys” only fully solidified itself in the public sphere in the 1940s.

Now, it seems these old ideals of gendered colours are being given up in favour of attitudes toward clothing that allow for self-expression in any colour or style, regardless of gender.

The industry is still in its early stages and its numbers can fluctuate due to self-reporting among other factors. While there is not much information available about the value of the market in Canada, industry projections see the global market for genderless clothing reaching a worth of $3.2 billion (U.S.) by 2028. Even A-list celebrities such as Megan Fox and Zoe Saldaña are raising their children to wear what they want, without gender stereotypes.

“Colour, clothing, style—everything can be gender neutral. It’s really up to us as adults to see it differently,” says Mary-Jo Dorval, the designer behind the Montreal-based gender- neutral kids’ clothing line, Trucs d’enfants. “By not labelling my clothes it makes it easier for consumers to see it like that as well.”

Dorval began her business producing alternatives to the highly gendered clothing of the fast-fashion industry seven years ago. She said she was inspired by her friend’s difficulties in finding sustainable, locally made genderless clothing for their children. Her website is chock-full of orange, purple and green shirts, pants and overalls. Most items are made from a cotton or bamboo-modal blend, and are modelled by children of all ages displaying the clothes’ stretch and fit as they play or nap.

“I really wanted to break this ‘black- grey-beige’ idea we have of gender- neutral clothing,” Dorval adds. By giving children genderless clothing, Dorval says, she provides them with the option to choose how to express themselves.

This rings true for Markus Harwood- Jones, a YA author and PhD candidate in gender studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He says the decision to raise and dress his child, River, in a gender-open way was an easy one. He says he wants his child to be able to express themself now, and feel comfortable with their gender expression as they grow up, whoever they grow up to be.

“When they get older, if River is really butch, or really femme, or whatever, we want to just make sure that they have pictures that feel like, ‘oh, that’s me,’” Harwood-Jones says. His family often uses an analogy referencing starting babies on solid foods. “You don’t start your kid on solid foods on day one,” Harwood- Jones says. They want River to express their fashion sense as soon as they are developmentally ready for it, and provide River a wardrobe that helps them do just that.

Harwood-Jones adds that children show their preferences earlier than many would think. When River was six months old, Harwood-Jones, his husband and their co-parent would hold up onesies on the changing table so River could choose what they wanted to wear.

Now, at almost two years old, River takes the lead on shopping excursions, asking for purple dresses and tutus. Harwood-Jones says his family often thrifts clothing to keep costs low, but when they do buy new, they lean toward small businesses that are queer owned or gender neutral.

Dorval believes small businesses will continue to bear the torch of clothing designed for everyone once the mainstream sheen wears off. However, if parents want to ignore gender labels in big-box stores, she says they should go for it.

“You can buy a princess skirt for your little boy,” she says. “It doesn’t matter.”

Nathan Kanasawe was 23 when they first went viral. Early one September morning in their town of Sudbury, Ontario, they decided to go on a 2 a.m. drive with a friend. While driving, they saw someone testing a Boston Dynamics robot dog.

“I did a U-turn because we’re like, ‘Well, what the fuck was that?’ And then, when we pulled up beside it, we were like, ‘That’s so cool. Can we take a video of it?’” In the video, Kanasawe and their friend could be heard saying “oh my God!” and “I love you!” excitedly to Spot, the black and yellow dog.

“I was really amazed by it. I didn’t have any other thoughts other than, ‘Oh my god, it’s a robot.’ I had no real thoughts about what it meant, politically or socially. I was just like, ‘It’s a robot dog!’”

When they went to bed, the video had gained about 60 retweets. They were woken up the next morning by their notifications going off as the post reached 50,000 retweets. The video later hit 14 million views and had thousands of retweets. Boston Dynamics themselves had to put out a statement. While the video continued trending, people started digging up Kanasawe’s tweets about being a K-pop stan, and posting pictures of their face.

It was 2020 and, though many people shared Kanasawe’s wonder, others began to criticize him for being excited about seeing the robot. “At first people were like, ‘Whoa, that’s really freaky.’ But then, people were like, ‘Have you guys heard about Boston Dynamics opening up a military contract? They’re gonna use the Boston Dynamics dogs as police dogs.’ I was like, ‘That’s fucking awful. But I didn’t know that.’”

Twitter users began commenting things like, “So, you love police dogs,” and calling Kanasawe a “bootlicker.” Some even suggested that they were part of Boston Dynamics’ marketing agency.

Kanasawe, who is Ojibwe, attempted to explain his position by responding to comments on the original tweet. “I was trying to [tell] people…I understood that these things were dangerous to people of colour as well. But it was hard to respond to everybody. I mean, I’m getting hundreds of replies in just a few minutes, over the course of maybe three days. Doing damage control in that type of situation is kind of impossible.”

Kanasawe says they didn’t realize people would become so hostile so quickly. “Because all of the comments on the video were negative, it started leaking into my other posts.” Despite the fact that they tried to maintain separation between their family and social media, Kanasawe’s family became aware of their Twitter account after the video went viral. Kanasawe says they never felt unsafe, but they did feel “exposed” and “embarrassed” as the tweet started to follow them in their everyday life.

“I had no privacy. I don’t think I realized that it was going to affect my internet footprint significantly. Ninety percent of the searches on my full name, that robot dog will just show up,” Kanasawe says. The negative backlash and subsequent pile-on led Kanasawe to delete his tweet, then his entire account. Out of an abundance of caution, he made his new Twitter account and previous Instagram accounts private.

“I really didn’t want it to happen again,” they say. “I felt very out of control of whatever narrative was being placed on that video. I think that because I didn’t have any control over it, a lot of people made assumptions about me and about my friend, too,” Kanasawe explains, noting that they hated it. They ended up wondering: should they continue to be this online?

*

Why are people so comfortable being awful to others on social media?

Faye Mishna, a University of Toronto professor in the faculty of social work, has studied bullying and cyberbullying for decades. She says there are different factors that lead to people choosing to be bullies online. One of the factors is, of course, the perception of anonymity. “If you don’t know me, you don’t see the effect that you have on me,” Mishna says. “Being online can disinhibit because it seems impersonal. You don’t see the impact you have.”

Mishna’s studies focus on how bullying, cyberbullying, and more recently, sexting, affect kids and young people—groups for whom being online has always been part of life. “When we first started, every family had a computer. They didn’t have small devices. [Those] changed everything. It was as large as the Industrial Revolution. Once you have cars and the industrial revolution, you can’t act as though you don’t.”

Statistics from Media Technology Monitor say, “Two in five Canadian kids aged two to 17 own a cell phone and 60 percent have used one in the past month. Usage (87 percent) and ownership (81 percent) are the highest among teens.” If you own a smartphone, chances are you’ve got at least one social media account. The 2018 Canadian Internet Use Survey says social media was regularly used by nine out of 10 Canadians between the ages of 15 to 34.

Since devices make us more connected, there’s more opportunity for young people to experience cyber victimization. According to Elizabeth Englander for the Journal of Pediatrics and Pediatric Medicine, “Increased digital exposure to a potential perpetrator of cyberbullying seems to increase the odds of victimization, in much the same way that greater exposure to a traditional aggressor can increase the odds of becoming an in-person target.” Simply put: the more time you spend online, the higher the possibility of being subject to cruelty on the internet.

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) says in a recent study that most Canadians think social media usage has a “neutral impact on their overall wellbeing.” With that being said, there is a significant increase in the number of people who feel it can be “detrimental.”

“Slightly more Canadians feel social media is harmful (20 percent) to their wellbeing than in 2020, when 16 percent described it as such. Similarly, fewer see it as beneficial,” the study says.

The effect that cyberbullying can have on a young mind is “terrible,” Mishna says. “For young people, it can affect your ability to concentrate, to go to school, to socialize. It can make them depressed; it can make them scared to reach out, it can make them anxious.”

The Health Education & Behavior study by Meaghan C. McHugh, Sandra L. Saperstein, and Robert S. Gold “OMG U #Cyberbully! An Exploration of Public Discourse About Cyberbullying on Twitter” backs up that claim. It said that cyberbullying can lead to anger, low self-esteem, depression, and suicidal ideation.

While there is ample research about cyberbullying of kids and adolescents, the data for the phenomenon among adults is more scant. Statistics Canada discovered in a 2019 study that a quarter of young adults aged 18 to 29 years old experienced cybervictimization in 2018, with receiving unwanted sexually suggestive or explicit messages and aggressive or threatening emails, social media or text messages being among the most common forms.

The numbers also show that queer and Indigenous youth, of which Kanasawe identifies as both, are also at risk for even higher levels of cyberbullying. In fact, 52 percent of youth who don’t identify as male or female reported being victimized online.

The Statistics Canada study continues, “Besides gender, the likelihood of being victimized online was greater among sexually diverse youth (sexual attraction other than the opposite sex) and First Nations youth living off-reserve.” This means young queer and Indigenous people may be less likely to express themselves online, leaving them with fewer outlets to share and connect.

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The attacks Kanasawe faced changed how they interact with others. Now, they tend to guard their posts, when they decide to make them, by keeping them private and limiting their number of followers. “I didn’t want a lot of people seeing tweets, and if they did, then I would delete them,” they say. “It kind of changed the way that I was on social media.”

On going viral, Mishna says it’s important to know that that kind of response is a possibility. “You can’t really anticipate it except just to know that it could happen. I think we really need to provide support for people [being bullied]. One of the things is, why is it important not to do that, not to join in and shame, because it really does affect someone terribly.”

In an interview with Paper Magazine, then 19-year-old Jazmine Stabler recalled going viral in a cruel meme posted on Twitter. The meme made fun of her facial tumor, which Stabler was born with and had grown to accept. “Why post me? I’m just over here in Alabama living my best life, attending college, minding my own business.” Her comments came after her prom pictures were posted on Twitter with the explicit intent of making fun of the young woman. She took it in stride, but not everyone who unwillingly has content go viral is able to cope with all the negative attention.

In 2019, actress Constance Wu received heavy backlash for a series of tweets criticizing the renewal of the show she starred in, Fresh Off the Boat. After taking a three-year break from social media, Wu said in 2022 that the negative reception she received led her to attempt suicide.

Going viral didn’t affect Kanasawe’s mental health the way it did Wu’s. Things took a weird turn about a year after the video was posted, though. Someone had edited the audio to include the n-word and antisemitic phrases. Kanasawe could do nothing about it, since they previously licenced the video to American pop culture blog Barstool Sports and no longer owned it. This made it impossible to get the video taken down after it went to the wrong side of the internet. Kanasawe was especially hurt that people couldn’t tell the video had been vandalized, and that others were finding the edited video funny.

“My friend and I, we’re not Jewish, and we’re not Black,” they explained. “But if we had been either of those two things, it would have probably taken a mental toll on us to see not only just the video, but the response to that video. To people just laughing and cheering it on. It would have been horrible.”

One of the worst parts of facing this kind of thing is the sense of powerlessness, the lack of agency over whether and how others understand us. “[Cyberbullying] really needs to be dealt with as a community,” Mishna says. She says it’s important that people not just pile negative comments onto viral posts. “One thing that can help is bystanders intervening. A bystander can respond privately to the victimized person just to provide some support. They are incredibly important, and research has shown that when bystanders do jump in and say something, it really makes a difference.”

Nowadays, Kanasawe doesn’t use Twitter that much. They’ve mostly migrated to TikTok, an app with its own host of cyberbullying and negativity. Though, their time on the app is spent trying to help others in the queer community. They run the account More Binders, a mutual-aid program that provides free binders to trans youth. They’ve even gone viral on TikTok, but this time around, it was more positive. “When I had a video go semi-viral [on TikTok], it was for a good purpose. That video was me talking about how I wanted to send trans kids binders for Christmas,” they say. They understand how expensive binders are, and they’re committed to sending the gender-affirming clothing to trans youth who can’t afford it.

“It’s just ironic now because without that video going even semi-viral, I wouldn’t have been able to run More Binders for the last three-ish years.”

It’s not going viral that’s the problem, then; it’s how we behave in groups when we don’t like something. Taking a second to think before commenting can go a long way toward helping ensure those who are already marginalized have a safer life, both online and off.

Photo by Britney Supernault

Three years ago, Kiona Callihoo Ligtvoet and Sanaa Humayun were both working as junior employees for art centres whose staff were predominately white. Callihoo Ligtvoet is Cree, Métis, Dutch and mixed European and Humayun is Pakistani; the two friends, who co-hosted a book club together, started to talk about the isolation they felt in their respective spaces as BIPOC artists, and how they felt their agency wasn’t being prioritized. They felt safe with one another, so they shared with each other that they’d faced barriers to access.

“We started having these very real conversations,” Humayun says, “and we realized that what we were doing was peer mentorship.” The product of these conversations was Making Space, a collective that focuses on early-career BIPOC artists and is what Humayun calls “in resistance to the art world at large,” a world which demands that artists produce with aggression. Instead, Amiskwaciwâskahikan-based Callihoo Ligtvoet and Mohkintsis-based Humayun are “two babies who made a group for other babies,” Humayun says, and have created a space of gentleness, which they say is an act of resistance in itself. “We talk about the experiences we’ve had, the people we felt unsafe with, and how to move through those experiences, in a way that’s honest and transparent,” Humayun says.

The collective helps members advocate for fair compensation when freelancing or working in institutional artistic spaces. It’s offered paid skill-sharing workshops, casual in-person hangouts, and hosted speaker events with established artists, who regularly tell Callihoo Ligtvoet and Humayun that they wish there’d been a similar group around when they’d started out. Members collaborated on an art show at McMullin Gallery in Edmonton that’s on through October. The bulk of its community, however, is rooted in its Slack channel of over 100 members, a place to share opportunities, portfolios, and recommended readings.

While there are always projects and plans in the works, the collective doesn’t focus on targeted regular meetups and ongoing deadlines because it’s based in the understanding that members’ capacity to make art and take on new projects can waver. Humayun says that people in the art world speak about community all the time, though often through institutional lenses in which creators’ identities are central to their work. But Making Space is a judgement-free zone, one whose casual drop-in style lets group members choose how much or little to take on and in what capacity to be part of group events.

“So many times Kiona and I say, like, ‘Am I going to take this call from my bed with no pants on? Yeah, probably,’” Callihoo Ligtvoet says. “We all have jobs, we all have families, we all have things that we’re going through. There are times that we’ve been posting events, and we’ve entered it kind of like, ‘I’m exhausted today, I’m feeling really heavy.’ And we leave and feel playful and so happy with the people that [we’re] spending time with. It doesn’t feel extractive.”

The collective’s drop-in style format is about members taking what they need, taking “what feels most relevant.” This way of operating, Callihoo Ligtvoet says, is intentional because the group is working to counteract ideas of exploitation.

“It directly ties into that scarcity mindset of having to produce all the time. So [we keep it] a space where people feel comfortable and there’s nothing owed of them. They don’t have to step into this with obligations, restrictions, or ways that they need to fit,” Callihoo Ligtvoet says.

This process didn’t come easily; it took many virtual and in-person conversations between Making Space community members about supports that they need to take on projects with deliverables, and conversations between Callihoo Ligtvoet and Humayun about keeping the group as low pressure and flexible as possible. Instead of making regular demands on people’s time, Making Space is a cheerleader for its members’ growth, always a soft place to land if they choose to move away and then actively engage again.

“The exciting part of Making Space,” Callihoo Ligtvoet says, “is that it’s always going to shift with us and with the people who still want it.”

Photo by Gilaxia

One brisk November 1938 afternoon in Basel, Switzerland, chemist Albert Hofmann successfully synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide for the first time. The compound was set aside and forgotten for five years until Hofmann resynthesized it, accidentally absorbed some, and took the world’s first acid trip.

The discovery of acid, or LSD, changed the course of social history. Hofmann’s employer, Sandoz Laboratories, began selling it as a psychiatric panacea in 1947, hailing it as a cure for everything from alcoholism to schizophrenia to criminal behaviours and “sexual perversions.” Curious journalists warmly welcomed the new drug in their reporting.

The ’50s welcomed a new era of psychedelic research for a variety of ailments. Newspaper and magazine headlines were positive, mirroring the science world’s excitement around the newfound LSD. “Can This Drug Enlarge Man’s Mind?,” asked Gerald Heard in Horizon magazine in May 1963. He decided that it could. In November, Cosmopolitan ran a piece calling it “Hollywood’s Status Symbol Drug.”

This pro-psychedelic narrative didn’t last long, however, with some states banning sale and possession and concerned parents and citizens getting involved. It is here that we begin to see the media changing their perspectives on LSD and other psychedelic drugs, reporting on both the changing legal landscape and on shifting public opinion. “Stronger Curbs on LSD Proposed: Medical Society Committee Says Hallucination Drug is ‘Most Dangerous,’” read a headline in The New York Times on March 30, 1966. “Is the Trip Over for LSD?” asked Business Week on April 22. It was close: the psychedelic ’60s were entering the beginning of their end.

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Mass media and the public are deeply, closely intertwined, with the media taking on the role of distillers, taking information straight from the source and providing it to the public in an easily digestible way. Beginning in the 1950s, mass media including newspapers and TV were the primary source of information to the public, and thus, the most important catalyst for moulding public opinion. On one hand, in the ’60s, the media was simply reporting on what some people already seemed to want to believe – that LSD and other psychedelic drugs could be dangerous. On the other, the media also played a role in shaping public opinion around these drugs and their potential dangers, and in creating the worries, often false, around them to begin with.

In 1968, possession of LSD became illegal in the U.S. After a June 17, 1971 press conference with then-U.S. president Richard Nixon, the term “war on drugs” became popularized with the media’s help. Editors quickly pivoted to publishing fear-mongering stories of addicts roaming the streets, exaggerated drug abuse statistics, and polarizing, racist takes. Usually, it was Black and other racialized people accused of being drug addicts and criminals and who made up the majority of American prison populations. By 1996, Black men were sent to prison for minor drug offences 13 times more often than white men.

Following this legal shift, drug reporting between the ’70s and ’90s skewed negative. “A New Generation Discovers LSD, and Its Dangers,” said The New York Times in December 1991. Between that headline and today, The New York Times has changed its tune. This same publication now shares dozens of stories on the so-called psychedelic renaissance. In the last few years, they’ve published pieces with a more curious tone: “What Does Good Psychedelic Therapy Look Like?” Dana G. Smith wondered this year.

In many ways, the media is responsible for shepherding the new era of acceptance we’re entering now. I think the modern-day psychedelic renaissance started around 2010 when The New York Times published “Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again,” a dive into cancer patients’ experiments with psilocybin to face terminal diagnoses. Although certainly not the first (Wired published a piece on tech boys loving acid in in 2006, “LSD: The Geek’s Wonder Drug?”), a legacy publication sharing something so different from the public’s traditional understanding of medicine and healing, and from their previous stance, was radical. Since then, we’ve seen a noticeable increase in the media promotion of psychedelics.

But while journalists’ work functions as a cultural mirror, sometimes reflecting current public opinion back to the public, journalists, as the frontline workers in the information economy, need to look past existing trends and popular thought to report a more complete, and sometimes critical or unpleasant, truth.

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Today, psychedelics are celebrated as a new healing cure, a way to get multiple years of therapy in one trip, and a way to treat anything and everything from depression to eating disorders to migraines. Media coverage is, for the most part, overwhelmingly positive. It seems the miracles of psychedelics don’t ever end. Celebrities are coming out as psychedelic supporters, donating millions to the cause of psychedelic therapy, and sharing their stories, whether healing or hilarious. Aaron Rodgers credits psychedelics with making him a better football player. Jaden Smith claims they made him more empathetic. Both were speakers at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies’s (MAPS) June 2023 Psychedelic Science conference in Denver, which drew over 11,000 attendees. Contrary to the headlines of the ’70s and ’80s, headlines today don’t often mention that psychedelics may not work as intended and that there are plenty of harms and risks involved.

“[T]here’s so much misinformation being peddled, it’s leading people to not get the help that they need. And a big part of that misinformation is this notion that psychedelics are somehow a magic bullet, where you can go and have an experience and it’s going to fix things in you,” says author and psychedelic therapy advocate Shannon Duncan, who believes that the media needs to be more transparent in psychedelic reporting.

The top few results for a search on psilocybin therapy are articles preaching the power of magic mushrooms: “How psilocybin, the psychedelic in mushrooms, may rewire the brain to ease depression, anxiety and more,” reports CNN. Almost no articles show up discussing the risks involved and how to figure out if they’re a good fit.

The dangers of talking about psychedelics through a majorly positive, healing lens lie in what’s being omitted. In this regard, the responsibility of psychedelic reporters is huge, says Amanda Siebert, psychedelic and cannabis journalist and author. The main problem, she says, lies in exaggerated media and lack of media literacy. “People are not reading the entire thing. They’re skimming. They’re seeing ‘oh, this person did psychedelics and it cured their depression.’ I think the problem with that is it perpetuates this idea that psychedelics are a panacea.”

“I do ultimately think the onus is on the user,” says Dr. Erica Zelfand, a physician specializing in psychedelics and lead instructor at Oregon’s InnerTrek psychedelic facilitator training school. “It’s your body, it’s your consciousness, that’s your call.” The media’s job in this, she says, is to help people decide the right choice for them. She says journalists could be doing a better job of delivering accurate, nuanced data.

Dr. Dave Rabin, co-founder of Apollo Neuroscience, thinks media professionals aren’t doing enough work to find the right sources. He says many articles about psychedelic medicine cite experts who don’t practice it, or who aren’t involved in clinical research, which can sometimes lead to articles overstating the risks, backed up by people who don’t know enough to make those claims. He adds that too often, the therapy part of psychedelic therapy is pushed aside and not talked about nearly as much as the psychedelic part, which leaves an incomplete picture of how treatment works.

Acupuncturist, primary care provider, and psychedelic therapy advocate Dr. Jonathan Fields also says the media is missing out on key parts of the psychedelic therapy journey. “[The media is] kind of talking about everything except the most important thing, which is actually the fact that it works because it’s allowing you to change your mindset,” he says. A key to the therapy is integration: psilocybin can help people integrate useful tools learned through therapy, or help people stick to regular exercise. “Rather than just like, ‘I took mushrooms. I feel great.’”

Dr. Evan Lewis, vice president of psychedelic neurology at Numinus, a Canadian company with a series of clinics focusing on psychedelic therapy, says that the media and, by default, readers and other people, just “don’t understand the importance of having a really good therapist.” He says that what remains underreported is the whole framework around good preparation, guidance and integration.

On the note of media literacy, Siebert says, the issue is that “a lot of people don’t understand the relationship that PR plays.” This puts the publications at fault, too: Paid content isn’t being clearly disclosed in the psychedelic space, and neither is the “press release regurgitation” that Siebert says sometimes happens, automatically pivoting the “article” toward positive coverage. These things are not inherently bad—they just aren’t transparent.

Promoting almost exclusively positive news and information about psychedelics can be dangerous. Today’s news cycle is more than 24 hours—it’s deeper. The internet creates echo chambers and vacuums. Two people could have differing thoughts and both, after a Google search, could come back with apparent facts to back themselves up. Gen Z gets more of their information from TikTok rather than Google, and TikTok is full of diluted, or even totally wrong, information.

While we as reporters can’t control what someone is consuming on social media, we can control the messaging that we share and propagate on our own platforms and in our articles. We are not just writing about psychedelics for the sake of writing about psychedelics.