Boob Lift

This Sunday, my digsmate and I came to the conclusion that as women with bigger busts, we have the upper hand. When buying shirts, we are able to fill out the shirt quite well and this essentially makes sure that it looks even better than it did on the coat hanger lookalike mannequin in the shop window! In a strange and yet fully logical manner, the analogy can also be applied to Upstart and the show we produced this week and are trying to plan for future shows. Let me explain: like the running order that I referred to in my blog post last week, and to the shirt that I refer to this week, these two are the structures that hold or arrange the show or the mentioned body parts. And the ‘filler’, be it  boobs or programming content is what counts in the end. I think our show this week was in the ‘C-cup’ range of bra sizes, resting in a medium sized shirt: a good fit but more could have been added to make it that much of a better fit. 

Freedom Day was the decided theme for this week and a good theme it proved to be. We had two guests in studio- Mr. Maqanda, a history teacher at Ziphozihle’s school and Mr. Richard Pithouse, the Politics lecturer here at Rhodes. Both were led into discussion by Anesipho who at times nearly got overtaken by the passion with which Maqanda and Pithouse spoke about Freedom Day, the country’s 18^th birthday and how the youth can come to appreciate a day that they didn’t experience (the first democratic voting). The content of the interview was well guided by Anesipho’s questions which were sculpted by BK well before hand. I think this is quite an important aspect of the show prepration that  BK has picked up on;  that is, making sure that the questions used by the Upstarters when conducting live and recorded interviews, are structured and focused. I was so grateful for BK at that point because Anesipho had no worries what-so-ever while sitting next to these two well-spoken men. (Girl Power!)

During the debriefing session after the show, Ziphozihle and Thobani spoke about the interviews they conducted this week with regards to Freedom Day. Ziphozihle had experienced technical difficulties and her interview couldn’t be aired, but it was clear that for her, the experience of talking to her interviewees had nevertheless been positive. She explained that the  general reaction of the people she spoke to in her community to Freedom Day was quite good. Something she said about spending her Freedom Day at home and talking to her family about the holiday struck me. The mere fact that she was discussing this holiday with her family was amazing to me because my family and I don’t do that at all! I enjoyed listening to her retelling some of these stories and the experiences her family had for them to appreciate Freedom Day.

Thobani’s interview which we edited and could air, had me (and hopefully people at home and in studio) thinking quite seriously about what Freedom Day means to him and his community. Norman, the elderly man he had interviewed, retold a story about the days of Apartheid. I found his descriptions really contributed to the meaning of the show:

“There was a certain siren that would cry… each and every black man must move out from town because there was a time when if you were in town, you had to produce a certain paper, where are you coming from- to and from, the paper… it was so embarrassing that time…”

This was a  man who has lived through Apartheid and who can appreciate a day like Freedom Day because he now has the freedom to walk the streets without that piece of paper.  Listening to him  made me reconsider this public holiday and its worth. I think I may ask my family about their Freedom Day experiences now and try make it more important than a day of sleeping and movies. But in my defense for this year, I did help with the creation of the Upstart show on Freedom Day, so I think that counts :).  

I would say that currently, even though we still have glitches such as transport, no presenters being in studio (long story which I don’t feel like talking about really) and having to bring Steve in as anchor this week, our show went as smoothly as it could. We still had laughs towards the end, people listening at home (as we saw on twitter but still not Mxit as I had hoped). And there was an email from Masi, the Rhodes music Radio station manager, saying that he tuned in and thought it was really good content. So all in all, we’re getting there. Next week we talk Worker’s Day! Watch this space as our Upstart Radio bra size hopefully gets that well deserved boob lift and goes to a perky D-cup!  

Nadia