Being married is like being half of a two-headed monster. It's impossible to avoid regular disagreements when you're bound to another person for the rest of your life. Even the perfect marriage (if there was such a thing) would have its daily frustrations. Funnily enough, most fights aren't caused by big decisions but the simple, day-to-day questions, such as "What do you want for dinner?"; "Are we free Friday night?"; and "What movie do you want to see?"
Here are some hilarious tweets that just about every married couple will understand.
Parenting is hard for just about everyone. You're completely responsible for a small human that doesn't come with an instruction manual, and it's a case of trying to do the best you can with what you've got. Some people seem to think that celebrities should be infallible, so when Kevin Federline shared a video of Britney Spears being stern with her children there was always going to be negative feedback. But surprisingly, the video has, in fact, stirred up more support for the star and her parenting methods.
If you've been on the internet for any amount of time you know that parent shaming is something that comes in like a tidal wave on an unsuspecting parent just sharing their truth. It seems especially vicious towards moms, so much so that the phrase mom-shaming was coined some time ago. Mom-shaming is the act of judging and attacking mothers for their personal parenting choices. But lately there's been some push back on the normalization of mom-shaming that has been a part of internet culture since mom groups were formed. Parents are daring to show their messy houses and parenting failures on their way to getting things right for their children.
Federline's reasons for posting the videos of Spears disciplining her children is unclear. Perhaps it was to embarrass her or show her as an unfit parent. But parents across the internet were having none of it. Sure there were a few here and there that criticized, but most comments were supportive of the pop star. Parents are owning that this parenting gig is hard and capturing a few minutes of out-of-context video doesn't show the whole story and they said just that.
One Twitter user, Ask Aubry, posted the "damaging" video of Spears and said, "Wait, Britney Spears giving her kids clear boundaries, expectations and wanting them to know her worth & value like millions of other parents have in a highly out-of-context and edited video, is Kevin Federline's 'gotcha' moment?" She wasn't alone in her musing. The Twitter users' comments were filled with parents agreeing with the sentiment.
Another person with the user name Arcane Saint commented, "I see not one thing wrong with this interaction. I am so upset & heartbroken for Britney 💔💔💔." Under TMZ's Twitter feed for the same video, the support was still overwhelmingly evident with many users echoing the same sentiment, that they saw nothing wrong in the video.
It seems the only parent being questioned in the comments is Federline, which may not have been what he was hoping for when he shared these private videos. It appears Spears has plenty of supporters who didn't take kindly to Federline's attempt to shame her.
There seems to be a noticeable shift from mom-shaming to mom-supporting on social media, and that can only be a good thing. Parenting is hard enough on its own and co-parenting with someone outside of your home can add an additional layer of hard, especially when things are less-than amicable.
After winning the fight to end her conservatorship in 2021, Spears is under even more scrutiny than the average celebrity. Seeing parents come to the defense of Spears as a fellow parent is heartwarming. Maybe the unintended result of all this could be the two of them working toward a more healthy co-parenting relationship, preferably outside of the public eye.
Kevin Federline Posts Videos of Britney Spears Arguing with Sons
Kevin Federline has had enough of Britney Spears' public attacks on their two sons, Sean and Jayden, and now he wants to show the world just how contentious he says Britney's relationship has been with the boys for years.
It’s back-to-school time for a lot of folks in America and that means getting the kids ready for another year in the classroom. For teachers, it often means forking out a lot of their own money to give the kids in their class the tools necessary to learn.
A 2018 study found that 94% of teachers spend their own money to stock their classrooms. The average teacher spends $479 and 7% of teachers spend more than $1,000. This comes at a time when, in inflation-adjusted terms, teacher salaries have declined by almost 4% over the past decade.
According to Newsweek, this unnecessary burden placed on teachers inspired entrepreneur Erin Foster, who has more than 600,000 followers on Instagram, to put out a story linking to teachers’ Amazon wishlists.
Erin Fuller-Wellman, a first grade teacher at Buffalo Elementary School in Wayne County, West Virginia, needed books for her classroom so she posted her wishlist on Foster’s “Clear the Lists” and Facebook, but she never believed the response she’d receive.
"The CRAZIEST thing just happened to me," Erin Fuller-Wellman posted on Facebook. "I go outside to see literally 10 boxes laying on my porch. I open the first box and it's full of books. I think, ‘I wonder who sent these?’ At the bottom, there's a note, ‘Here is to your best year, yet! Thank you for choosing to teach, you have the most important job in the world from @jennifer.garner.’ My jaw literally dropped. Every box after was from her."
Fuller-Wellman believes that Garner saw her list on Foster’s post and sent her some books because the actress knows how difficult life can be in West Virginia. Garner was born in Houston, Texas, but moved to Charleston, West Virginia, at the age of 3.
“When I saw the first note, saying it was from her, my jaw dropped and I thought I was imagining it,” she told Newsweek.
Garner has in the past spoken out about the importance of teachers. Last year, at the start of the school year, she shared her support for teachers at a time when COVID-19 was making their profession even more challenging.
“Thank you teachers, thank you administrators, thank you school staff — for being on the receiving end of a year and a half of feelings (kids’ and parents’) — big and loud, quiet and deep,” she wrote.
Garner’s donation to the teacher was a fantastic show of support for the people with the most important job in the world. It was also a savvy move in the social media age. She has to know that word would get out (we’re writing about it!) and it would inspire others to help teachers as well.
The actress has spoken out about the challenges that rural kids in West Virginia face so that’s probably a big reason why she chose to help Fuller-Wellman. Garner didn’t grow up impoverished, but she saw it all around growing up in West Virginia.
“We were surrounded by generational world poverty, so when I suddenly found myself with a little bit of a voice, I just said ‘who was helping kids in rural America?’” she said on Kerry Washington’s “Street You Grew Up On” show. “Who’s giving them a leg up in West Virginia or Mississippi or South Carolina?”
Nearly 50 years after Sacheen Littlefeather endured boos and abusive jokes at the Academy Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is issuing a formal apology. In 1973, Littlefeather refused Marlon Brando's Best Actor Oscar on his behalf for his iconic role in “The Godfather” at the ceremony to protest the film industry’s treatment of Native Americans.
She explained that Brando "very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award, the reasons for this being … the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry and on television in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee."
Littlefeather is a Native American civil rights activist who was born to a Native American (Apache and Yaqui) father and a European American mother.
The unexpected surprise was greeted with a mixture of applause and boos from the audience and would be the butt of jokes told by presenters, including Clint Eastwood. Littlefeather later said that John Wayne attempted to assault her backstage.
"A lot of people were making money off of that racism of the Hollywood Indian," Littlefeather told KQED. "Of course, they’re going to boo. They don't want their evening interrupted."
The Academy is apologizing for what she endured with “an evening of conversation, reflection, healing, and celebration with Littlefeather” on September 17, 2022, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, it announced on its blog.
"The abuse you endured because of this statement was unwarranted and unjustified," former Academy president David Rubin wrote in a letter to Littlefeather, CNN reports. "The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable. For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration."
Littlefeather said in a statement that the event is "a dream come true" and joked that “we Indians are very patient people—it's only been 50 years! We need to keep our sense of humor about this at all times. It's our method of survival."
It’s sure to be a cathartic evening for Littlefeather.
"People don't realize what my experience was. They had absolutely no idea—none—of what my experience was, what I went through," Littlefeather told the Academy. "And now, I'm here to tell my story the way that it was from my point of view, from my experience."
\u201cAcademy apologizes to Sacheen Littlefeather over 1973 Marlon Brando Oscar controversy https://t.co/rwR0MTLO0F\u201d
“It feels like the sacred circle is completing itself before I go in this life,” Littlefeather, 75, added. “It feels like a big cleanse, if you will, of mind, body, and spirit, and of heart. It feels that the truth will be known. And it feels like the creator is being good to me.”
Brando passed away in 2014 but would probably be excited for Littlefeather’s long overdue apology. Three months after she refused the award on his behalf, he explained his rationale for rejecting the Oscar on “The Dick Cavett Show.” The interview was historic because Brando was known for avoiding the media, it was also far ahead of its time given the climate in Hollywood surrounding people of color in 1973.
"I felt that there was an opportunity," Brando calmly told Cavett about the awards ceremony. "Since the American Indian hasn't been able to have his voice heard anywhere in the history of the United States, I felt that it was a marvelous opportunity for an Indian to be able to voice his opinion to 85 million people, I guess that was the number. I felt that he had a right to, in view of what Hollywood has done to him."
“The Godfather” star then expanded his thoughts on representation to include all people of color.
“I don't think people realize what the motion picture industry has done to the American Indian, and as a matter of fact, all ethnic groups. All minorities. All non-whites,” he said. “So when someone makes a protest of some kind and says, 'No, please don't present the Chinese this way.' ... On this network, you can see silly renditions of human behavior. The leering Filipino houseboy, the wily Japanese or the kook or the gook. The idiot Black man, the stupid Indian. It goes on and on and on, and people actually don't realize how deeply these people are injured by seeing themselves represented—not the adults, who are already inured to that kind of pain and pressure, but the children. Indian children, seeing Indians represented as savage, as ugly, as nasty, vicious, treacherous, drunken—they grow up only with a negative image of themselves, and it lasts a lifetime.”
Hollywood is still far from ideal when it comes to being truly representative of America at large. But it is miles ahead of where it was in 1973 when the film industry, including some of its biggest stars, was outwardly hostile toward the idea of representation.
The Academy’s public apology should give some closure to Littlefeather and provide hope to countless others. Because when an industry honestly confronts its past mistakes, it makes a promise that it’ll be less likely to commit them in the future.
