The Boston Globe - 07.09.2019

SEPTEMBER 7, 2019 5

Q.

I’vebeeninalong-

distance relation-

ship with someone

for three years. We

have differences in culture,

race,andreligion,butwe

pushed that aside. We enjoyed

each other’s company and we

always felt comfortable with

each other. He had faith in our

relationship, and even though

we were long-distance, we’d use

Skype and behave as though we

were living together. Every four

months we would meet each

other because of my work (I get

seven days off every four

months). He kept saying he

loved me, he didn’t want to lose

me, and mentioned that he

cried when he had a random

dream that I died.

But last month he asked for

a breakup. He said he didn’t

love me enough. I tried to move

on. Later, after he found out I

had spent the night with some-

one else, he called and said he

thought about me a lot and

worried that he might not find

someone as great.

What’s going on? I know

that long-distance relationships

can be tiring, but I have two

months left of my job/intern-

ship, and I had planned to live

with him after that. He ended it

at the last minute — after three

years. I want to move on, to be

able to love again, but should I

keep trying with him now that

he’s reconsidering? I need to

understand what he meant

when he said he doesn’t love me

enough. HELP

A.

This is why it’s a

good idea to stop all

communication (for

a while, at least) after a break-

up. It sounds like you contin-

ued to be in touch with him af-

ter he ended it, which gave him

the chance to lean on you as he

processed all of his feelings. He

was second-guessing himself.

He was jealous when he heard

you were with someone else. All

of that makes sense, but he

should have talked to a friend

about it. You’re the wrong audi-

ence for this.

You say you need to under-

stand what he meant when he

said he didn’t love you enough,

but the message was pretty

clear. Even though you’ve been

a great partner in many ways,

you’re not the endgame. He

can’t commit to living together

or planning for more. You were

so close to being with him all

the time — enjoying each other

in person instead of Skyping all

night — but he chose to let go.

Doesn’t that say enough?

He told you he’s afraid he

won’t find someone who’s as

great as you, but there’s not

much you can do with that in-

formation. He’s not telling you

he made a mistake. He’s not

taking anything back or ex-

plaining his decision. He’s ask-

ing for more of your attention

because he’s nervous about

what happens next.

From now on, remember

that you’re starting a new chap-

ter of your life — and you don’t

have to pick up the phone.

MEREDITH

READERS RESPOND:

Stop communicating with

the ex and date local. That’s

about it. SUNALSORISES

This guy abruptly and un-

ceremoniously dumped you.

Obviously he isn’t the perfect

partner you imagined him to

be. Learn and move on.

GOLDGAMBIT

Long-distance relationships

are really tough. Some couples

can make them work and some

can’t. It’s telling that you

“pushed aside” your differenc-

es, instead of dealing with them

directly. I would let this go. If

you were long-distance for the

entire three years, you might

find it’s easier than you think to

forget about him.

SURFERROSA

He doesn’t love you enough

means exactly what it sounds

like. He loves you, just not

enough. Maybe he was comfort-

able with the distance because

he could do what he wanted

and still have the comfort/secu-

rity of being in a relationship.

You say you lived “as though we

were living together.” No, no

you didn’t — because Skype and

seeing someone every four

months is not the same as living

together day in and day out.

You created an illusion. Rather

than try to understand his

thoughts/motives, you need to

move on. Breakups hurt more

the longer you carry them out.

It’s best to pick up the pieces

and lead your life in a way that

makes you happiest.

BOSTONSWEETS

^“Skype and seeing someone

every four months is not the

same as living together day in

and day out.”This!! GDCATCH

It seems that you already

moved on, seeing as after only a

couple days after the breakup

you already spent the night

with someone else.

CUPPAJOESEATTLE

Column and comments are

edited and reprinted from

boston.com/loveletters. Send

letters to meredith.goldstein

@globe.com.

LOVE LETTERS

BY MEREDITH GOLDSTEIN

He ended it. Should

she move on?

I’ve never liked the term
“microaggressions.” Not be-
cause they don’t exist (they
do). And not because the term
fails to capture the particulate
nature of these tiny, barely per-
ceptible, ostensibly inadver-
tent slights and biases, and the
way they often transmit them-
selves without any propulsion
from intention. It actually
nails that.
I don’t like the term “micro-
aggressions” because it auto-
minimizes itself, presents itself
as small enough to ignore (or
to challenge the very existence
of), and fails to account for ac-
cumulation — i.e. how many
micros does it take to make a
macro? And how do you mea-
sure a substance that won’t
identify itself?
Well, you can’t. But thanks
to the Internet’s knack for seiz-
ing and freezing a moment,
zooming into it, pulling it
apart, and clicking it into
oblivion, we are now at least
able to study microaggressions
more closely.
And not so that we (mean-
ingmembersofvirtuallyany
minority group imaginable)
can complain to you about ev-
ery microscopic thing that
grinds our gears, but so that
we all can be less careless in
spreading them around. We’re
making each other sick.
Take the clip that went viral
this week of an interaction be-
tween comedian Kevin Hart
(whose outright gay-unfriendly
jokes in the past cost him a gig
hosting this year’s Oscars) and
recently-out rapper Lil Nas X
in a tease for HBO’s barber-
shop bro-down series, “The
Shop.”
In the brief clip, the young
rapper is asked to explain why

he decided, at the top of his

game with the megahit song

“Old Town Road,” to come out

as gay. Before he has a chance

to answer, a wincing Hart in-

terrupts: “He said he was gay!

So what?”

Nas continues his attempt

to answer, saying that like

many young men raised in ho-

mophobic environments he

was “growing up to hate this

[expletive]” — Hart interrupts

again, visibly puzzled. “Hate

what?” “Homosexuality, gay

people,” Nas says. “Why? Why

you growing to hate it?” Hart

asks. And here, Nas momen-

tarily becomes Everyqueer, his

eyelids lowering to fire shade,

his head tilting, the music in

his voice lowering to a sad tu-

ba mourning Hart’s integrity:

“Come on now, if you were re-

ally from the hood, you’d

know.”

Stop tape!

What we see here is what

we call a good old fashioned

heterosexual gaslighting. Hart

feigning confusion at Lil Nas’s

gesture to make other Lil Nas-

es in waiting feel like actual

humans instead of moving tar-

gets was disingenuous at best

(though par for Hart’s course)

and dangerous at worst.

Hart’s doubting squint at

Nas’s explanation is familiar to

any queer person who ever

had their torment held against

them as a lack of grit. And

what Hart might cast as the

extreme of acceptance — “He

said he was gay! So what?” —

also functions as an outright

dismissal of the extreme diffi-

culty that accompanies mak-

ing the choice to come out (es-

pecially in hip-hop), not to

mention the consequences

that follow.

Moreover, the attempt to

frame the conversation about

Nas’s sexuality around what

Hart is prepared to talk about

(regardless of who is being

asked the question) is a hall-

markmove of the vocally “tol-

erant,” who stop short of ac-

ceptance becauseew men kiss-

ing gross!

So, in this one example of

justafewseconds(sorryforall

the Sharpie marks) we see

multiple examples of overlap-

ping microaggressions, which,

taken together, do not feel mi-

cro. They just feel aggressive.

And familiar!

Sort of like the tweet sent

out this week by deputy press

secretary Judd Deere, “For all

of you who still think our @VP

in anti-gay, I point you to his

and the @SecondLady’s sched-

ule tomorrow,” which included

lunch with Irish Prime Minis-

ter Leo Varadkar (a gay) and

his husband (also). This one’s a

modern classic.

“I have lunch with gay peo-

ple” is like a subtle, brunchier

twist on “Some of my best

friends are black.” Weirdly bit-

ter, plainly unsatisfying, yet

somehow deemed widely ac-

ceptable, it’s the Aperol spritz

of homophobic things to sug-

gest — this notion that sharing

a table with someone (let

alone a fellow world leader)

could or should be confused

with accepting them, despite,

you know, one lunch mate’s

sincerely held belief that his

other lunch mates are a sign of

“societal collapse.”

Nor does a shared appetizer

of bangers and/or mash undo

years of rhetorical and legisla-

tive damage levied by Pence

against the LGBTQ communi-

ty at large. No ma’am.

Look, I'm not so wild about

the Internet essentially being a

high-speed conveyor belt of

unhealthy confections that we

must force feed ourselves to

keep up. (Again, we’re making

ourselves sick.) But it does give

us the ability to stop the ma-

chine for a second and exam-

ine what’s broken. Annoying

as it may be, it becomes an ex-

tremely useful tool in teaching

an increasingly combative You

about the ever-expanding ar-

ray of endlessly various Us.

And you’ll be seeing more,

not fewer, of these citizen traf-

fic stops — especially as what

might be called microaggres-

sions start to assume more un-

settling forms at life-scale.

Lately, it seems like the haz-

ards of standing up for oneself

are growing more real (and

flat out aggressive) by the day,

whether you’re a woman de-

manding your rightful access

to health care, a black Ameri-

can seeking equal treatment

under the law, a teen pushing

for gun control, or a common-

sense queer doing what you

can to keep the Trojan horse of

“straight pride” firmly on the

other side of the moat.

But macroaggressions (as

no one calls them) will always

get more focus than those mil-

lions of little ways we hurt

each other each and every day.

For now, the best and only pre-

ventionagainstthespreadof

microaggressions is listening

— actually listening — to one

another.

And occasionally covering

your mouth.

Michael Andor Brodeur can be

reached at mbrodeur@

globe.com. Follow him on

Twitter @MBrodeur.

@LARGE| MICHAEL ANDOR BRODEUR

Microaggressions in freeze frame

MARK J. TERRILL/AP/FILE EVAN AGOSTINI/INVISION/AP/FILE

KEVIN HART

LIL NAS X

By Katherine Rosman
NEW YORK TIMES
It’s not a “collabo.” It’s a
“collab.”
These are among the les-
sons shared by YouTube in an
internal five-page document
meant to help fashion brands
learn the dos-and-don’ts of the
video platform, just in time for
what the company is terming a
“historic occasion.”
On the eve of New York
Fashion Week, nearly 15 years
into its life span, the platform
is finally following in the foot-
steps of its peers Instagram,
Snapchat, and Amazon, and
trying to cultivate the possibili-
ties of the style set. YouTube’s
big news is that it is introduc-
ing a feature that brings to-
gether fashion content on one
web page, and throwing a big
fashion week bash to celebrate.
There are many people,
even old ones, who wouldn’t
need to be told how to define
“collab,” let alone pronounce it.
But YouTube — beloved for zits-
and-all videos — is right to wor-
ry that the learning curve may
be steep for fashion companies
most comfortable sharing
highly produced and well-pol-
ished marketing images on
glossy magazine pages, glittery
runways, and gingerly curated
Instagram feeds.
After all, YouTube’s most
popular videos tend to focus on
music and gaming or day-in-
the-life vlogs made by celebri-
ties who created their stardom
through amateur recordings.
But about two years ago —
by the time Instagram had es-
tablished itself as the dominant
digital destination for style-ad-

jacent people and companies

looking to build and burnish

brands through images — You-

Tube executives began to real-

ize that some of its fashion and

beauty creators were starting

to attract large audiences.

This would lead to a num-

ber of opportunities, including

commercial partnerships with

luxury brands.

“We thought, ‘If it’s already

happening organically, imag-

ine what could happen if we re-

ally started to work on this?’ ”

said Robert Kyncl, the chief

business officer of YouTube.

The person enlisted to

translate YouTube to the fash-

ion set is Derek Blasberg, a for-

mer contributor to Vanity Fair

who is perhaps best known for

his Instagram page, which

showcases photos of him hob-

nobbing at parties and on

yachts with friends like Karlie

Kloss, Gwyneth Paltrow, Katy

Perry, and David Geffen.

Blasberg’s Instagram feed

has 900,000 followers. He de-

clined to say how many You-

Tube subscribers he has and

has set the preferences on his

channel’s home page to not dis-

play the number. He has posted

59 videos, and noted he had ap-

peared in lots of other creators’

content, including a zodiac

quiz with Zendaya for Tommy

Hilfiger’s channel, but that “I

don’t consider myself a You-

Tube creator.”

Rather, his main focus since

joining YouTube last June as

head of fashion and beauty

partnerships has been convinc-

ing other brands, designers,

and models of the need to be-

come creators.

For example, he has per-

suaded Victoria Beckham and

Goop, among others, to create

YouTube channels and to get

serious about devoting time to

making videos. Their YouTube

numbers (105,000 subscribers

for Victoria Beckham, 45,

for Goop) don’t come close to

their Instagram followings

(26 million and 1 million), but

Blasberg isn’t concerned.

“We’re not competing

against Instagram, we are a

complement to Instagram,” he

said in a phone interview while

in Venice, where he had attend-

edthe Venice Film Festival, af-

ter having toured Ibiza, Spain,

but before he headed to the

Hamptons.

“I speak to members of the

fashion and beauty community

to manage expectations for the

sort of things that do well on

YouTube,” Blasberg said. “On

other platforms, a pretty girl

walking in a pretty dress can do

well. Not on YouTube, people.

The biggest advice I’ve given

people is: ‘Would you watch

this?’ No one sits down and

watches a bunch of commer-

cials.”

YouTube’s pitch to fashion

brands is based in part on the

number of people who use the

platform. It reaches 1.9 billion

people per month, according to

company data, and its content

is watched by more 18- to 49-

year-olds on their mobile devic-

es than any cable TV network.

Reflecting on his accom-

plishments of the last year,

Blasberg pointed to videos

posted to YouTube by those he

has helped to wrangle onto the

platform, including one first

played for guests at Marc Ja-

cobs’s wedding in April to Char

Defrancesco and Naomi Camp-

bell’s “Emotional Return to the

Maison Valentino Runway

During Paris Fashion Week.”

With almost 300,000 sub-

scribers to her channel, Camp-

bell is seen as the “breakout”

star of the new YouTube fash-

ion set. (She has 7.5 million fol-

lowers on Instagram.)

YouTube tries to get fashionable

PHOTOS BY SLAVEN VLASIC/GETTY IMAGES

Models for Damo Wang

walk the runway at New

York Fashion Week.

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