Instagram has been criticized for ages for its tolerance of pervasive (and, let’s face it, annoying) diet spon-con. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go check one of the Kardashians’ profiles right now. Scroll down a bit, and chances are you’ll see an “#ad” for Flat Tummy Tea or another product that promises miracle weight loss. Actor Jameela Jamil is just one of the many people who have called out these ads for encouraging toxic diet culture. Earlier this year Jamil directly took Khloé Kardashian to task for promoting Flat Tummy Tea.
“It’s incredibly awful that this industry bullied you until you became this fixated on your appearance,” she wrote to the reality star in March. “That’s the media’s fault. But now please don’t put that back into the world, and hurt other girls, the way you have been hurt.”
It appears Instagram has taken notice of the issue. The social media platform has announced several new policies about spon-con and ads, calling out ones that revolve around weight loss, in particular. Under the new rules, users under 18 won’t be able to see posts promoting weight loss or cosmetic procedures with incentive to purchase product. Also, IG has nixed posts that make “miraculous claims” about a product. Translation: If an influencer insists she lost 10 pounds in 72 hours just by drinking a shake, that post is going down. And good riddance.
“We want Instagram to be a positive place for everyone that uses it, and this policy is part of our ongoing work to reduce the pressure that people can sometimes feel as a result of social media,” Emma Collins, a public policy manager at Instagram, said in a press release.
Jamil is, no surprise, thrilled about these changes. “It sets the tone that this is not okay in our society,” she told British Elle. “We have hyper-normalized flogging nonsense to young impressionable people. These people are selling hair-growth gummies but wearing extensions, or photoshopping themselves to look slimmer and selling a weight-loss shake. There are so many lies being told, and we’ve accepted that as a cultural norm.”
While social media still has considerable room for improvement, moves like this one are a step in the right direction.
In her cover interview with Glamour, Jamil clarified that her criticism of the Kardashians doesn’t mean she hates them. “I just want them to stop selling laxatives, and then I will get off that dick,” she said, laughing. “That’s all I’m trying to do. I’m not trying to attack anyone. But if you have a lot of power and influence and money, and you’re using yours irresponsibly, and other people aren’t aware that they’re being sold a lie, I’m gonna step on that dick.”
In the four decades Claire’s has been in business, the accessories chain has pierced more than 100 million ears around the world. Given the store’s target demographic, it’s safe to say that a large percentage of these piercings have been on young girls. While ear piercings generally go off without a hitch save for nervous butterflies and an iron-gripped hand squeeze, a new viral Facebook post written by a former employee has sparked a heated discussion around children and consent.
As first reported by Refinery 29, 32-year-old Raylene Marks recently quit her job at an Edmonton, Canada location after taking issue with the company’s piercing policy. In a post titled “An Open Letter To Claire’s Corporate,” which has received an upwards of 6,500 likes and 500 comments, Marks details an uncomfortable situation in which she was asked to piece the ears of a seven-year-old girl, who “made it clear she no longer wanted to get her ears pierced.”
“I had a couple ‘gray area’ piercings where the children resisted heavily [then] were pressured and intimidated by the parents into settling down,” she wrote. “I didn’t feel good about those, and I started to wonder at what point the piercer and the parent are actually violating a child’s personal boundaries. Last week was a breaking point.”
She then goes on to share more about the interaction that made her leave the company. Marks was performing a “double” with another sales associate (a procedure in which two associates pierce both ears at the same time), which is often done on nervous children who might get upset after the first earring is put in. Marks says the girl was crying loudly, begging her mother to take her home, and “expressed that she didn’t want us touching her, that we were standing too close, that she was feeling uncomfortable.”
“That child’s message was loud and clear to me,” Marks continued. “Do not touch my body, do not pierce my ears, I do not want to be here.”
The mother and daughter eventually left without a piercing after Marks took a step away from the situation. “I’m inclined to respect a child’s right to say no to any adult forcing any kind of non-medical contact on them, so I told the other piercer I wouldn’t be part of the ear piercing for this girl,” she wrote.
The next day when discussing the event with her manager, Marks explained how uncomfortable she felt as the child was “begging to be left alone” despite the mother’s pressure to go through with the piercing. According to Marks, she was told, “You would have had no choice but to do it.” She then hypothesized the “worst scenario I could think of,” in order to see how far she was expected to take the policy.
“So if a mother is physically restraining her daughter, holding her down and saying, ‘DO IT,’ while that little girl cries and asks me not to, do I do the piercing?” asked Marks. “Yes, you do the piercing,” Marks says she was told.
She quit the same day.
In her post, Marks goes on to say that her manager continued to assert that “children can be held down and pierced,” and that there was one policy in place regarding the subject of consent, which stated: “We reserve the right to refuse an ear piercing if a successful one cannot be done.” Marks calls this a “deeply flawed policy that helps facilitate situations where children can be traumatized,” as there is “no mention of the use of physical restraint by the parent, or the employee’s right to refuse an ear piercing”—and she challenged the company to consider amending its policies.
Glamour reached to Claire’s representatives for comment and received the following statement:
By now, you’ve seen the photos of families crying at the U.S. Border, scrolled through the social media posts urging you to help, and possibly heard the disturbing audio that claims to capture children sobbing shortly after they’ve been separated from their parents at an immigration detention center. Yet you still might not fully comprehend the scope of the situation. Is there an actual policy that allows this to happen? Is it legal? Who is responsible?
The short of it: The current administration is separating families.
In April, the Trump administration took an unprecedented step and put in place a “zero tolerance” immigration policy calling for the prosecution of those who illegally enter the U.S. That policy, in the eyes of the administration, includes separating minor children from their parents at the border, regardless of whether their parents are attempting to seek asylum — which is not illegal — or attempting to cross the border for the first time, which remains a misdemeanor crime.
In doing so, the administration has separated an estimated 2,000 children from their parents, with each not knowing where the other is sent, and leaving an already burdened immigration system in what can only be described as in shambles.
And Trump’s constituents — the American public — are making their feelings toward this policy well-known by protesting around the nation, with many calling for the practice to be rolled back immediately after seeing images of young children crying along the border as their parents are detained. That includes former first lady Laura Bush, who wrote an op-ed calling the separation of families “cruel,” and even first lady Melania Trump, who said in a statement she “hates to see” children torn from their parents and guardians.
As everyone seeks to gain answers while watching the calamity unfold in real time, several truths have been lost and falsehoods put forth. Glamour.com spoke to several experts to try and make sense of what one called a “manufactured crisis” that so far, is doing exactly what it was meant to do: Cause utter and complete chaos.
FACT: The Immigration Law Is Decades Old, but the Policy to Separate Children Is All Trump
PHOTO: SOPA Images
A woman talks to a relative, separated by a fence.
In April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a policy change (which differs from a law change) that would instate a “zero tolerance policy” for those attempting to cross the border into the United States. Prior to this policy change, anyone attempting to cross the border illegally was processed, detained, and sent back home.
Additionally, prior to the change, those attempting to seek asylum in the U.S. under both the Bush and Obama administrations were given due process, or those traveling with minor children, were detained, interviewed, released back into the public and expected to return to court at a later date to be judged based on the merit of their “credible fear” interview.
However, Sessions, and the entire Trump Administration, have now chosen to criminally prosecute anyone attempting to cross the border.
Period.
Now, when a parent is detained, their child will be placed under the custody of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who is then in charge of placing the child with a relative, sponsor or in a shelter. This, administration officials explained, is meant to deter people from attempting to cross the border in the first place.
“If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law,” Sessions said while speaking to law enforcement officials in Scottsdale, Arizona. “If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”
But, Sessions is truly bending the limits of the law with his statement.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re seeking asylum, which is 100 percent lawful. They’re not treating it that way,” Alida Garcia, a former lawyer and current coalitions and policy director with FWD.US, an advocacy organization working for a more common sense immigration system, told Glamour. “So what we have is families that are arriving and many of these families are lawfully seeking asylum because [in their country] they’re in fear of gangs, they’re being persecuted in other ways, and they’re turning themselves over to border patrol because they’re trying to seek asylum. What this policy does is criminalize the act of a mother trying to save her child.”
FACT: The U.S. Is Violating the International Refugee Convention With Its Policies
PHOTO: LOREN ELLIOTT/Getty
A section of the US-Mexico border fence.
“Our policy is if you break the law, we will prosecute you,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said while testifying in front of a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing in May. “You have an option to go to a port of entry and not illegally cross into our country.”
And, to add more fuel to the confusion fire, on Sunday Nielsen tweeted, “This misreporting by Members, press & advocacy groups must stop. It is irresponsible and unproductive. As I have said many times before, if you are seeking asylum for your family, there is no reason to break the law and illegally cross between ports of entry.”
She doubled down on the those statements in Monday press briefing at the White House, saying “if you’re seeking asylum, go to a port of entry. You do not need to break the law of the United States to seek asylum.” When asked if people were being turned away from entry points, she said that was “incorrect.”
However, according to multiple reports, even from Garcia herself, those attempting to cross at official ports of entry, including bridges along the Texas border, are being told to turn back.
As The Intercept explained, immigrants who enter the United States, even by just a few inches, and share with immigration officials that they are afraid to return to their home nation have the right to request asylum and to be immediately processed, thanks to the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Once admitted, the asylum seekers then bear the burden of proof to show officials that by returning to their home nation they will be under great risk. If the person can prove, per the Immigration and Nationality Act that they are being persecuted based on “…race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” they could be granted asylum.
However, instead, these same people are now being detained or are simply being told that there is no room for them in the United States and are being turned away.
“These directives failed to mention U.S. treaty obligations that prohibit the penalization of refugees for illegal entry or presence—protections created in the wake of World War II, after many nations had treated refugees who sought asylum in their countries or who had invalid travel documents as ‘illegal’ entrants,” the Human Rights First organization shared in a statement referencing the 2017 executive order by Trump that prioritized the prosecution of immigration offenses. “In fact, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General warned in 2015 that the referral of asylum seekers for criminal prosecution may violate U.S. obligations under the Refugee Convention and its Protocol.”
FACT: The Zero Tolerance Policy Could Damage Children for Life
PHOTO: Stacey Leasca
Children awaiting asylum at a San Diego border entry point eat lentil soup and day-old bagels for dinner.
This isn’t just a legal issue, but a human, and humane one too, according to medical professionals.
Dr. Colleen Kraft, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, explained to Glamour in a phone call while she made her way to the border, that the zero tolerance policy could have incredibly long lasting damage.
“Some real issues that we’re focusing on is that separating children when they are really young has irreparable harm,” Kraft said. She further explained, when children are taken away from their parents or support system that can create what is known as “toxic stress.”
“Very young children have this stress response, which increases their cortisol and their fight or flight hormones in response to fear,” Kraft explained. “When these children are exposed to scary things like traveling from their home countries to the U.S. or being separated from their parents, they remain with those chemicals high in their system. And they have no adult to buffer their stress, so they remain on red alert all the time.”
This, she said, can cause long-term damage including developmental delays in speech and the ability to develop social bonds. “If it continues, it can be a lifelong problem,” she said.
While visiting a government shelter for in Combes, Texas this spring, Kraft explained how she witnessed a small toddler forcefully beating her tiny fists on the play mat, sobbing uncontrollably. Her mother was nowhere to be seen because she had been taken elsewhere. (Because it’s against the Office of Refugee Resettlement policy, no adults were allowed to pick up and comfort the distressed child.) The event affected Kraft so deeply that she wrote an entire op-ed for the Los Angeles Times about it.
Kraft noted, “If there’s enough room to put kids in one place and parents in another, they have the space to house them together.”
FACT: Advocacy Groups Need More Help
PHOTO: Joe Raedle/Getty
Noelle Andrade (L), her mother Armida Hernandez protest the separation of children from their parents in front of the El Paso Processing Center.
To say that advocacy, governmental and volunteer organizations are stretched to their limits would be an understatement.
“They’re running out of space to house the parents, and then not being able to accommodate all the kids that are moved around the U.S. Then, you’re seeing operational challenges where [the Department of] Health and Human Services has so many people who are coming through their pipeline that they’re not prepared to handle,” Former Department of Homeland Security official Peter Boogaard explained to Pacific Standard.
Furthermore, people don’t know where to turn to help, and advocacy groups are even less sure of which direction to point people in.
“There’s a lot of people that contact us and saying, hey, we want to take in some of those children and we say, we’re not that agency. We’re not the agency that can help you with that,” Enrique Morones, founder and director of San Diego-based human rights organization Border Angels, told Glamour. Instead, what his organization does is both advocate for human rights and also pounds the pavement by dropping water and supplies at life-saving stations along the border.
But, in a single silver lining in this story, Morones says he’s witnessed an unprecedented level of human kindness in the wake of both the Trump presidency and with the implementation of this policy.
“When we started putting the water out in ‘96, we’d have groups of 30 or 40 people,” he said of the volunteer program to refill those life-saving stations. The Saturday after Trump was elected in 2016, Morones said, “we had 500.”
When asked if he ever felt like giving up, Morones immediately replied that he felt just the opposite. “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention. And I’ve never been more outraged. The children issue is just too much. It’s unbelievable.”
What’s Next in the Fight for More Humane Immigration Policies:
PHOTO: LEILA MACOR/Getty
A volunteer speaks with migrant families in a Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas.
According to the Washington Post, the American Immigration Council filed a lawsuit in 2017 to challenge the “alleged efforts by CBP in California to prevent asylum seekers from applying.” According to Astrid Dominguez, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Border Rights Center, the 2017 suit is tied to the administration’s new “zero-tolerance” policy.
And, as Politifact reported, the United Nations human rights office has called for an end to the separation of families, noting that using immigration detention and family separation “as a deterrent runs counter to human rights standards and principles.”
On June 7, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced the “Keep Families Together Act,” which will do just as the name implies. So far, it has 49 cosponsors made up of Democrats and Independents.
“I know my dad and if I was at risk of dying, my father would make that journey to protect me,” Garcia explained when asked what she believed the biggest misconception of the current migrant crisis was. “And so I think, what the American public is missing is a little bit of empathy to understand that these are families living through immense crisis. These are families. These are women who have seen their husband killed, fathers who heard from gang members that their daughters will be raped and brought into their gangs. They’re doing what they can with the limited resources they have to try to save them. Seeking asylum is a lawful act.”
Garcia added, “I think if people took five minutes to listen to what they’re going through, they would want to speak with pride that America is a place that will welcome them with safety.”
Glamour reached out to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for a comment on the conditions of the children in shelters. Our calls and email were not returned.
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