Academic literature on the topic 'Young-adult=2015-05-17'

Abstract Purpose: In breast cancer, research has shown that race/ethnicity can be associated with disease predisposition, access to care, and outcomes. There are numerous studies that combine Hispanic and Haitian women of all races into a single group may overlook opportunities to identify important characteristics within this heterogeneous group that could more accurately predict outcomes and reveal opportunities to improve care. While these groups have been studied, there is limited data about the impact race and ethnicity has on young adult populations with breast cancer. In this study, we sought to compare tumor subtype, stage at diagnosis, time to surgery (TTS), and overall survival (OS) among Hispanic and Haitian patients to patients of non-Hispanic descent. Methods: Women 18 years of age or older who had been diagnosed with stage 0-IV breast cancer and who had undergone lumpectomy or mastectomy were identified in the National Cancer Database (2015-2021). Tumor subtype and stage at diagnosis were compared by race/ethnicity. Multivariable linear regression and Cox proportional hazards modeling were used to estimate associations between race/ethnicity and adjusted TTS and OS, respectively. Results: A total of 48,150 patients were included in this study. Age ranged from 18-40. (American Indian [AI]: 79 [0.2%]; Haitian: 15,011 [31.2%]; White: 20,109 [85.48%]; Hispanic: 13,030 [27%]. Hispanic women had higher rates of triple-negative disease (23.9%) than did Haitian women (11.5%) and white women (10.9%; P < .001). Hispanic women had higher rates of node-positive disease (26.2%) in comparison to Haitian women (17%) and Non-Haitian/Hispanic women (10% P < .001). Hispanic women had worse PFS when diagnosed at Stage II and III (37 and 39 months, respectively) than Haitian women (57 and 59 months, respectively) and Non-Haitian/Hispanic women (82 and 87 months). Hispanic women had worse OS when diagnosed at Stage II and III (45 and 49 months) than Black women (70 and 75 months) and non- women (95 and 99 months). Conclusion: Hispanic women had worse PFS versus non-Hispanic and Haitian women as well as present with high-risk characteristics and nodal disease at the time of presentation. This suggests that racial differences in tumor subtype and nodal stage among Hispanic women highlight the importance of developing additional studies which can investigate the disparity in patient outcomes with young Hispanic women in breast cancer research. Citation Format: Ragisha Gopalakrishnan, Esha Gandhi, Maria Fernandez. Disparities at the Convergence of Race and Ethnicity: Examining Trends and Outcomes in Young Women Diagnosed with Breast Cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2023 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2023 Dec 5-9; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(9 Suppl):Abstract nr PO2-26-05.

Introduction It is very common for children’s films to adapt, rework, or otherwise re-imagine existing cultural material. Such re-imaginings are potential candidates for fidelity criticism: a mode of analysis whereby an adaptation is judged according to its degree of faithfulness to the source text. Indeed, it is interesting that while fidelity criticism is now considered outdated and problematic by adaptation theorists (see Stam; Leitch; and Whelehan) the issue of fidelity has tended to linger in the discussions that form around material adapted for children. In particular, it is often assumed that the re-imagining of cultural material for children will involve a process of “dumbing down” that strips the original text of its complexity so that it is more easily consumed by young audiences (see Semenza; Kellogg; Hastings; and Napolitano). This is especially the case when children’s films draw from texts—or genres—that are specifically associated with an adult readership. This paper explores such an interplay between children’s and adult’s culture with reference to the re-imagining of the horror genre in children’s animated film. Recent years have seen an inrush of animated films that play with horror tropes, conventions, and characters. These include Frankenweenie (2012), ParaNorman (2012), Hotel Transylvania (2012), Igor (2008), Monsters Inc. (2001), Monster House (2006), and Monsters vs Aliens (2009). Often diminishingly referred to as “kiddie horror” or “goth lite”, this re-imagining of the horror genre is connected to broader shifts in children’s culture, literature, and media. Anna Jackson, Karen Coats, and Roderick McGillis, for instance, have written about the mainstreaming of the Gothic in children’s literature after centuries of “suppression” (2); a glance at the titles in a children’s book store, they tell us, may suggest that “fear or the pretence of fear has become a dominant mode of enjoyment in literature for young people” (1). At the same time, as Lisa Hopkins has pointed out, media products with dark, supernatural, or Gothic elements are increasingly being marketed to children, either directly or through product tie-ins such as toys or branded food items (116-17). The re-imagining of horror for children demands our attention for a number of reasons. First, it raises questions about the commercialisation and repackaging of material that has traditionally been considered “high culture”, particularly when the films in question are seen to pilfer from sites of the literary Gothic such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) or Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). The classic horror films of the 1930s such as James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) also have their own canonical status within the genre, and are objects of reverence for horror fans and film scholars alike. Moreover, aficionados of the genre have been known to object vehemently to any perceived simplification or dumbing down of horror conventions in order to address a non-horror audience. As Lisa Bode has demonstrated, such objections were articulated in many reviews of the film Twilight, in which the repackaging and simplifying of vampire mythology was seen to pander to a female, teenage or “tween” audience (710-11). Second, the re-imagining of horror for children raises questions about whether the genre is an appropriate source of pleasure and entertainment for young audiences. Horror has traditionally been understood as problematic and damaging even for adult viewers: Mark Jancovich, for instance, writes of the long-standing assumption that horror “is moronic, sick and worrying; that any person who derives pleasure from the genre is moronic, sick and potentially dangerous” and that both the genre and its fans are “deviant” (18). Consequently, discussions about the relationship between children and horror have tended to emphasise regulation, restriction, censorship, effect, and “the dangers of imitative violence” (Buckingham 95). As Paul Wells observes, there is a “consistent concern […] that horror films are harmful to children, but clearly these films are not made for children, and the responsibility for who views them lies with adult authority figures who determine how and when horror films are seen” (24). Previous academic work on the child as horror viewer has tended to focus on children as consumers of horror material designed for adults. Joanne Cantor’s extensive work in this area has indicated that fright reactions to horror media are commonly reported and can be long-lived (Cantor; and Cantor and Oliver). Elsewhere, the work of Sarah Smith (45-76) and David Buckingham (95-138) has indicated that children, like adults, can gain certain pleasures from the genre; it has also indicated that children can be quite media savvy when viewing horror, and can operate effectively as self-censors. However, little work has yet been conducted on whether (and how) the horror genre might be transformed for child viewers. With this in mind, I explore here the re-imagining of horror in two children’s animated films: Frankenweenie and ParaNorman. I will consider the way horror tropes, narratives, conventions, and characters have been reshaped in each film with a child’s perspective in mind. This, I argue, does not make them simplified texts or unsuitable objects of pleasure for adults; instead, the films demonstrate that the act of re-imagining horror for children calls into question long-held assumptions about pleasure, taste, and the boundaries between “adult” and “child”. Frankenweenie and ParaNorman: Rewriting the Myth of Childhood Innocence Frankenweenie is a stop-motion animation written by John August and directed by Tim Burton, based on a live-action short film made by Burton in 1984. As its name suggests, Frankenweenie re-imagines Shelley’s Frankenstein by transforming the relationship between creator and monster into that between child and pet. Burton’s Victor Frankenstein is a young boy living in a small American town, a creative loner who enjoys making monster movies. When his beloved dog Sparky is killed in a car accident, young Victor—like his predecessor in Shelley’s novel—is driven by the awfulness of this encounter with death to discover the “mysteries of creation” (Shelley 38): he digs up Sparky’s body, drags the corpse back to the family home, and reanimates him in the attic. This coming-to-life sequence is both a re-imagining of the famous animation scene in Whale’s film Frankenstein and a tender expression of the love between a boy and his dog. The re-imagined creation scene therefore becomes a site of negotiation between adult and child audiences: adult viewers familiar with Whale’s adaptation and its sense of electric spectacle are invited to rethink this scene from a child’s perspective, while child viewers are given access to a key moment from the horror canon. While this blurring of the lines between child and adult is a common theme in Burton’s work—many of his films exist in a liminal space where a certain childlike sensibility mingles with a more adult-centric dark humour—Frankenweenie is unique in that it actively re-imagines as “childlike” a film and/or work of literature that was previously populated by adult characters and associated with adult audiences. ParaNorman is the second major film from the animation studio Laika Entertainment. Following in the footsteps of the earlier Laika film Coraline (2009)—and paving the way for the studio’s 2014 release, Boxtrolls—ParaNorman features stop-motion animation, twisted storylines, and the exploration of dark themes and spaces by child characters. The film tells the story of Norman, an eleven year old boy who can see and communicate with the dead. This gift marks him as an outcast in the small town of Blithe Hollow, which has built its identity on the historic trial and hanging of an “evil” child witch. Norman must grapple with the town’s troubled past and calm the spirit of the vengeful witch; along the way, he and an odd assortment of children battle zombies and townsfolk alike, the latter appearing more monstrous than the former as the film progresses. Although ParaNorman does not position itself as an adaptation of a specific horror text, as does Frankenweenie, it shares with Burton’s film a playful intertextuality whereby references are constantly made to iconic films in the horror genre (including Halloween [1978], Friday the 13th [1980], and Day of the Dead [1985]). Both films were released in 2012 to critical acclaim. Interestingly, though, film critics seemed to disagree over who these texts were actually “for.” Some reviewers described the films as children’s texts, and warned that adults would likely find them “tame and compromised” (Scott), “toothless” (McCarthy) or “sentimental” (Bradshaw). These comments carry connotations of simplification: the suggestion is that the conventions and tropes of the horror genre have been weakened (or even contaminated) by the association with child audiences, and that consequently adults cannot (or should not) take pleasure in the films. Other reviewers of ParaNorman and Frankenweenie suggested that adults were more likely to enjoy the films than children (O’Connell; Berardinelli; and Wolgamott). Often, this suggestion came together with a warning about scary or dark content: the films were deemed to be too frightening for young children, and this exclusion of the child audience allowed the reviewer to acknowledge his or her own enjoyment of and investment in the film (and the potential enjoyment of other adult viewers). Lou Lumenick, for instance, peppers his review of ParaNorman with language that indicates his own pleasure (“probably the year’s most visually dazzling movie so far”; the climax is “too good to spoil”; the humour is “deliciously twisted”), while warning that children as old as eight should not be taken to see the film. Similarly, Christy Lemire warns that certain elements of Frankenweenie are scary and that “this is not really a movie for little kids”; she goes on to add that this scariness “is precisely what makes ‘Frankenweenie’ such a consistent wonder to watch for the rest of us” (emphasis added). In both these cases a line is drawn between child and adult viewers, and arguably it is the film’s straying into the illicit area of horror from the confines of a children’s text that renders it an object of pleasure for the adult viewer. The thrill of being scared is also interpreted here as a specifically adult pleasure. This need on the part of critics to establish boundaries between child and adult viewerships is interesting given that the films themselves strive to incorporate children (as characters and as viewers) into the horror space. In particular, both films work hard to dismantle the myths of childhood innocence—and associated ideas about pleasure and taste—that have previously seen children excluded from the culture of the horror film. Both the young protagonists, for instance, are depicted as media-literate consumers or makers of horror material. Victor is initially seen exhibiting one of his home-made monster movies to his bemused parents, and we first encounter Norman watching a zombie film with his (dead) grandmother; clearly a consummate horror viewer, Norman decodes the film for Grandma, explaining that the zombie is eating the woman’s head because, “that’s what they do.” In this way, the myth of childhood innocence is rewritten: the child’s mature engagement with the horror genre gives him agency, which is linked to his active position in the narrative (both Norman and Victor literally save their towns from destruction); the parents, meanwhile, are reduced to babbling stereotypes who worry that their sons will “turn out weird” (Frankenweenie) or wonder why they “can’t be like other kids” (ParaNorman). The films also rewrite the myth of childhood innocence by depicting Victor and Norman as children with dark, difficult lives. Importantly, each boy has encountered death and, for each, his parents have failed to effectively guide him through the experience. In Frankenweenie Victor is grief-stricken when Sparky dies, yet his parents can offer little more than platitudes to quell the pain of loss. “When you lose someone you love they never really leave you,” Victor’s mother intones, “they just move into a special place in your heart,” to which Victor replies “I don’t want him in my heart—I want him here with me!” The death of Norman’s grandmother is similarly dismissed by his mother in ParaNorman. “I know you and Grandma were very close,” she says, “but we all have to move on. Grandma’s in a better place now.” Norman objects: “No she’s not, she’s in the living room!” In both scenes, the literal-minded but intelligent child seems to understand death, loss, and grief while the parents are unable to speak about these “mature” concepts in a meaningful way. The films are also reminders that a child’s first experience of death can come very young, and often occurs via the loss of an elderly relative or a beloved pet. Death, Play, and the Monster In both films, therefore, the audience is invited to think about death. Consequently, there is a sense in each film that while the violent and sexual content of most horror texts has been stripped away, the dark centre of the horror genre remains. As Paul Wells reminds us, horror “is predominantly concerned with the fear of death, the multiple ways in which it can occur, and the untimely nature of its occurrence” (10). Certainly, the horror texts which Frankenweenie and ParaNorman re-imagine are specifically concerned with death and mortality. The various adaptations of Frankenstein that are referenced in Frankenweenie and the zombie films to which ParaNorman pays homage all deploy “the monster” as a figure who defies easy categorisation as living or dead. The othering of this figure in the traditional horror narrative allows him/her/it to both subvert and confirm cultural ideas about life, death, and human status: for monsters, as Elaine Graham notes, have long been deployed in popular culture as figures who “mark the fault-lines” and also “signal the fragility” of boundary structures, including the boundary between human and not human, and that between life and death (12). Frankenweenie’s Sparky, as an iteration of the Frankenstein monster, clearly fits this description: he is neither living nor dead, and his monstrosity emerges not from any act of violence or from physical deformity (he remains, throughout the film, a cute and lovable dog, albeit with bolts fixed to his neck) but from his boundary-crossing status. However, while most versions of the Frankenstein monster are deliberately positioned to confront ideas about the human/machine boundary and to perform notions of the posthuman, such concerns are sidelined in Frankenweenie. Instead, the emphasis is on concerns that are likely to resonate with children: Sparky is a reminder of the human preoccupation with death, loss, and the question of why (or whether, or when) we should abide by the laws of nature. Arguably, this indicates a re-imagining of the Frankenstein tale not only for child audiences but from a child’s perspective. In ParaNorman, similarly, the zombie–often read as an articulation of adult anxieties about war, apocalypse, terrorism, and the deterioration of social order (Platts 551-55)—is re-used and re-imagined in a childlike way. From a child’s perspective, the zombie may represent the horrific truth of mortality and/or the troublesome desire to live forever that emerges once this truth has been confronted. More specifically, the notion of dealing meaningfully with the past and of honouring rather than silencing the dead is a strong thematic undercurrent in ParaNorman, and in this sense the zombies are important figures who dramatise the connections between past and present. While this past/present connection is explored on many levels in ParaNorman—including the level of a town grappling with its dark history—it is Norman and his grandmother who take centre stage: the boundary-crossing figure of the zombie is re-realised here in terms of a negotiation with a presence that is now absent (the elderly relative who has died but is still remembered). Indeed, the zombies in this film are an implicit rebuke to Norman’s mother and her command that Norman “move on” after his grandmother’s death. The dead are still present, this film playfully reminds us, and therefore “moving on” is an overly simplistic and somewhat disrespectful response (especially when imposed on children by adult authority figures.) If the horror narrative is built around the notion that “normality is threatened by the Monster”, as Robin Wood has famously suggested, ParaNorman and Frankenweenie re-imagine this narrative of subversion from a child’s perspective (31). Both films open up a space within which the child is permitted to negotiate with the destabilising figure of the monster; the normality that is “threatened” here is the adult notion of the finality of death and, relatedly, the assumption that death is not a suitable subject for children to think or talk about. Breaking down such understandings, Frankenweenie and ParaNorman strive not so much to play with death (a phrase that implies a certain callousness, a problematic disregard for human life) but to explore death through the darkness of play. This is beautifully imaged in a scene from ParaNorman in which Norman and his friend Neil play with the ghost of Neil’s recently deceased dog. “We’re going to play with a dead dog in the garden,” Neil enthusiastically announces to his brother, “and we’re not even going to have to dig him up first!” Somewhat similarly, film critic Richard Corliss notes in his review of Frankenweenie that the film’s “message to the young” is that “children should play with dead things.” Through this intersection between “death” and “play”, both films propose a particularly child-like (although not necessarily child-ish) way of negotiating horror’s dark territory. Conclusion Animated film has always been an ambiguous space in terms of age, pleasure, and viewership. As film critic Margaret Pomeranz has observed, “there is this perception that if it’s an animated film then you can take the little littlies” (Pomeranz and Stratton). Animation itself is often a signifier of safety, fun, nostalgia, and childishness; it is a means of addressing families and young audiences. Yet at the same time, the fantastic and transformative aspects of animation can be powerful tools for telling stories that are dark, surprising, or somehow subversive. It is therefore interesting that the trend towards re-imagining horror for children that this paper has identified is unfolding within the animated space. It is beyond the scope of this paper to fully consider what animation as a medium brings to this re-imagining process. However, it is worth noting that the distinctive stop-motion style used in both films works to position them as alternatives to Disney products (for although Frankenweenie was released under the Disney banner, it is visually distinct from most of Disney’s animated ventures). The majority of Disney films are adaptations or re-imaginings of some sort, yet these re-imaginings look to fairytales or children’s literature for their source material. In contrast, as this paper has demonstrated, Frankenweenie and ParaNorman open up a space for boundary play: they give children access to tropes, narratives, and characters that are specifically associated with adult viewers, and they invite adults to see these tropes, narratives, and characters from a child’s perspective. Ultimately, it is difficult to determine the success of this re-imagining process: what, indeed, does a successful re-imagining of horror for children look like, and who might be permitted to take pleasure from it? Arguably, ParaNorman and Frankenweenie have succeeded in reshaping the genre without simplifying it, deploying tropes and characters from classic horror texts in a meaningful way within the complex space of children’s animated film. References Berardinelli, James. “Frankenweenie (Review).” Reelviews, 4 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=2530›. Bode, Lisa. “Transitional Tastes: Teen Girls and Genre in the Critical Reception of Twilight.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 24.5 (2010): 707-19. Bradshaw, Peter. “Frankenweenie: First Look Review.” The Guardian, 11 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/oct/10/frankenweenie-review-london-film-festival-tim-burton›. Buckingham, David. Moving Images: Understanding Children’s Emotional Responses to Television. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996. Cantor, Joanne. “‘I’ll Never Have a Clown in My House’ – Why Movie Horror Lives On.” Poetics Today 25.2 (2004): 283-304. Cantor, Joanne, and Mary Beth Oliver. “Developmental Differences in Responses to Horror”. The Horror Film. Ed. Stephen Prince. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2004. 224-41. Corliss, Richard. “‘Frankenweenie’ Movie Review: A Re-Animated Delight”. Time, 4 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://entertainment.time.com/2012/10/04/tim-burtons-frankenweenie-a-re-animated-delight/›. Frankenweenie. Directed by Tim Burton. Walt Disney Pictures, 2012. Graham, Elaine L. Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002. Hastings, A. Waller. “Moral Simplification in Disney’s The Little Mermaid.” The Lion and the Unicorn 17.1 (1993): 83-92. Hopkins, Lisa. Screening the Gothic. Austin: U of Texas P, 2005. Jackson, Anna, Karen Coats, and Roderick McGillis. “Introduction.” The Gothic in Children’s Literature: Haunting the Borders. Eds. Anna Jackson, Karen Coats, and Roderick McGillis. New York: Routledge, 2008. 1-14. Jancovich, Mark. “General Introduction.” Horror: The Film Reader. Ed. Mark Jancovich. London: Routledge, 2002. 1-19. Kellogg, Judith L. “The Dynamics of Dumbing: The Case of Merlin.” The Lion and the Unicorn 17.1 (1993): 57-72. Leitch, Thomas. “Twelve Fallacies in Contemporary Adaptation Theory.” Criticism 45.2 (2003): 149-71. Lemire, Christy. “‘Frankenweenie’ Review: Tim Burton Reminds Us Why We Love Him.” The Huffington Post, 2 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/03/frankenweenie-review-tim-burton_n_1935142.html›. Lumenick, Lou. “So Good, It’s Scary (ParaNorman Review)”. New York Post, 17 Aug. 2012. 3 Jun. 2015 ‹http://nypost.com/2012/08/17/so-good-its-scary/›. McCarthy, Todd. “Frankenweenie: Film Review.” The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Sep. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/frankenweenie/review/372720›. Napolitano, Marc. “Disneyfying Dickens: Oliver & Company and The Muppet Christmas Carol as Dickensian Musicals.” Studies in Popular Culture 32.1 (2009): 79-102. O’Connell, Sean. “Middle School and Zombies? Awwwkward!” Washington Post, 17 Aug. 2012. 3 Jun. 2015 ‹http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/movies/paranorman,1208210.html›. ParaNorman. Directed by Chris Butler and Sam Fell. Focus Features/Laika Entertainment, 2012. Platts, Todd K. “Locating Zombies in the Sociology of Popular Culture”. Sociology Compass 7 (2013): 547-60. Pomeranz, Margaret, and David Stratton. “Igor (Review).” At the Movies, 14 Dec. 2008. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2426109.htm›. Scott, A.O. “It’s Aliiiive! And Wagging Its Tail: ‘Frankenweenie’, Tim Burton’s Homage to Horror Classics.” New York Times, 4 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/movies/frankenweenie-tim-burtons-homage-to-horror-classics.html›. Semenza, Gregory M. Colón. “Teens, Shakespeare, and the Dumbing Down Cliché: The Case of The Animated Tales.” Shakespeare Bulletin 26.2 (2008): 37-68. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1993 [1818]. Smith, Sarah J. Children, Cinema and Censorship: From Dracula to the Dead End Kids. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. Stam, Robert. “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation.” Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Eds. Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 1-52. Wells, Paul. The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch. London: Wallflower, 2000. Whelehan, Imelda. “Adaptations: the Contemporary Dilemmas.” Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text. Eds. Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan. London: Routledge, 1999. 3-19. Wolgamott, L. Kent. “‘Frankenweenie’ A Box-Office Bomb, But Superior Film.” Lincoln Journal Star, 10 Oct. 2012. 18 Aug. 2014 ‹http://journalstar.com/entertainment/movies/l-kent-wolgamott-frankenweenie-a-box-office-bomb-but-superior/article_42409e82-89b9-5794-8082-7b5de3d469e2.html›. Wood, Robin. “The American Nightmare: Horror in the 70s.” Horror: The Film Reader. Ed. Mark Jancovich. London: Routledge, 2002. 25-32.

Introduction Where children’s television once ruled supreme as a vehicle for sales of kids’ brands, the marketing of children’s toys now often hinges on having the right social media influencer, many of them children themselves (Verdon). As Forbes reported in 2021, the pandemic saw an increase in children spending more time online, many following their favourite influencers on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. The importance of tapping into partnering with the right influencer grew, as did sales in toys for children isolated at home. We detail, through a case study approach and visual narrative analysis of two Australian influencer siblings’ Instagram accounts, the nature of toy marketing to children in 2023. Findings point to the continued gendered nature of toys and the concurrent promotion of aspirational adult ‘toys’ (for example, cars, high-end cosmetics) and leisure pursuits that blur the line between what we considered to be children’s playthings and adult objects of desire. To Market, to Market Toys are a huge business worldwide. In 2021, the global toys market was projected to grow from $141.08 billion to $230.64 billion by 2028. During COVID-19, toy sales increased (Fortune Business Insights). The rise of the Internet alongside media and digital technologies has given toy marketers new opportunities to reach children directly, as well as producing new forms of digitally enabled play, with marketers potentially having access to children 24/7, way beyond the previous limits of children’s programming on television (Hains and Jennings). Children’s digital content has also extended to digital games alongside digital devices and Internet-connected toys. Children’s personal tablet ownership rose from less than 1 per cent in 2011 to 42 per cent in 2017 (Rideout), and continues to grow. Children’s value for brands and marketers has increased over time (Cunningham). The nexus between physical toys and the entertainment industry has grown stronger, first with the Disney company and then with the stand-out success of the Star Wars franchise (now owned by Disney) from the late 1970s (Hains and Jennings). The concept of transmedia storytelling and selling, with toys as the vehicle for children to play out the stories they saw on television, in comics, books, movies, and online, proved to be a lucrative one for the entertainment company franchises and the toy manufacturers (Bainbridge). All major toy brands now recognise the power of linking toy brands and entertaining transmedia children’s texts, including online content, with Disney, LEGO and Barbie being obvious examples. Gender and Toys: Boys and Girls Come Out to Play Alongside the growth of the children’s market, the gendering of children’s toys has also continued and increased, with concerns that traditional gender roles are still strongly promoted via children’s toys (Fine and Rush). Research shows that girls’ toys are socialising them for caring roles, shopping, and concern with beauty, while toys aimed at boys (including transportation and construction toys, action figures, and weapons) may promote physicality, aggression, construction, and action (Fine and Rush). As Blakemore and Center (632) suggested, then, if children learn from toy-play “by playing with strongly stereotyped toys, girls can be expected to learn that appearance and attractiveness are central to their worth, and that nurturance and domestic skills are important to be developed. Boys can be expected to learn that aggression, violence, and competition are fun, and that their toys are exciting and risky”. Recently there has been some pushback by consumers, and some toy brands have responded, with LEGO committing to less gendered toy marketing (Russell). YouTube: The World’s Most Popular Babysitter? One business executive has described YouTube as the most popular babysitter in the world (Capitalism.com). The use of children as influencers on YouTube to market toys through toy review videos is now a common practice (Feller and Burroughs; De Veirman et al.). These ‘reviews’ are not critical in the traditional sense of reviews in an institutional or legacy media context. Instead, the genre is a mash-up, which blurs the lines between three major genres: review, branded content, and entertainment (Jaakkola). Concerns have been raised about advertising disguised as entertainment for children, and calls have been made for nuanced regulatory approaches (Craig and Cunningham). The most popular toy review channels have millions of subscribers, and their hosts constitute some of YouTube’s top earners (Hunting). Toy review videos have become an important force in children’s media – in terms of economics, culture, and for brands (Hunting). Concurrently, surprise toys have risen as a popular type of toy, thanks in part to the popularity of the unboxing toy review genre (Nicoll and Nansen). Ryan’s World is probably the best-known in this genre, with conservative estimates putting 10-year-old Ryan Kanji’s family earnings at $25 million annually (Kang). Ryan’s World, formerly Ryan’s Toy Review, now has 10 YouTube channels and the star has his own show on Nic Junior as well as across other media, including books and video games (Capitalism.com). Marsh, through her case study of one child, showed the way children interact with online content, including unboxing videos, as ‘cyberflaneurs’. YouTube is the medium of choice for most children (now more so than television; Auxier et al.). However, Instagram is also a site where a significant number of children and teens spend time. Australian data from the e-Safety Commission in 2018 showed that while YouTube was the most popular platform, with 80 per cent of children 8-12 and 86 per cent of teens using the site, 24 per cent of children used Instagram, and 70 per cent of teens 13-17 (e-Safety Commissioner). Given the rise in social media, phone, and tablet use in the last five years, including among younger children, these statistics are now likely to be higher. A report from US-based Business Insider in 2021 stated that 40 per cent of children under 13 already use Instagram (Canales). This is despite the platform ostensibly only being for people aged 13 and over. Ofcom (the UK’s regulator for communications services) has discussed the rise of ‘Tik-Tots’ – young children defying age restrictions to be on social media – and the increase of young people consuming rather than sharing on social media (Ofcom). Insta-Kidfluencers on the Rise Marketers are now tapping into the selling power of children as social media influencers (or kidfluencers) to promote children’s toys, and in some cases, parents are happy to act as their children’s agents and managers for these pint-size prosumers. Abidin ("Micromicrocelebrity") was the first to discuss what she termed ‘micro-microcelebrities’, children of social media influencers (usually mothers) who have become, through their parents’ mediation, paid social media influencers themselves, often through Instagram. As Abidin noted: “their digital presence is deliberately commercial, framed and staged by Influencer mothers in order to maximize their advertorial potential, and are often postured to market even non-baby/parenting products such as fast food and vehicles”. Since that time, and with children now a growing audience on Instagram, some micro-microcelebrities have begun to promote toys alongside other brands which appeal to both children and adults. While initially these human ‘brand extensions’ of their mothers (Archer) appealed to adults, their sponsored content has evolved as they have aged, and their audience has grown and broadened to include children. Given the rise of Instagram as a site for the marketing of toys to children, through children themselves as social media influencers, and the lack of academic research on this phenomenon, our research looks at a case study of prominent child social media influencers on Instagram in Australia, who are managed by their mother, and who regularly promote toys. Within the case study, visual narrative analysis is used, to analyse the Instagram accounts of two high-profile child social media influencers, eleven-year-old Australian Pixie Curtis and her eight-year-old brother, Hunter Curtis, both of whom are managed by their entrepreneur and ‘PR queen’ mother, Roxy Jacenko. We analysed the posts from each child from March to July 2022 inclusive. Posts were recorded in a spreadsheet, with the content described, hashtags or handles recorded, and any brand or toy mentions noted. We used related media reports to supplement the analysis. We have considered ethical implications of our research and have made the decision to identify both children, as their accounts are public, with large follower numbers, promote commercial interests, and have the blue Instagram ‘tick’ that identifies their accounts as verified and ‘celebrity’ or brand accounts, and the children are regularly featured in mainstream media. The children’s mother, Jacenko, often discusses the children on television and has discussed using Pixie’s parties as events to gain publicity for the toy business. We have followed the lead of Abidin and Leaver, considered experts in the field, who have identified children and families in ethnographic research when the children or families have large numbers of followers (see Abidin, "#Familygoals"; Leaver and Abidin). We do acknowledge that other researchers have chosen not to identify influencer children (e.g., Ågren) with smaller numbers of followers. The research questions are as follows: RQ1: What are the toys featured on the two social media influencer children’s sites? RQ2: Are the toys traditionally gendered and if so, what are the main gender-based toys? RQ3: Do the children promote products that are traditionally aimed at adults? If so, how are these ‘toys’ presented, and what are they? Analysis The two child influencers and toy promoters, sister and brother Pixie (11) and Hunter (8) Curtis, are the children of celebrity, entrepreneur and public relations ‘maven’, Roxy Jacenko. Jacenko’s first business was a public relations firm, Sweaty Betty, one she ran successfully but has recently closed to focus on her influencer talent agency business, the Ministry of Talent, and the two businesses related to her children, Pixie’s Pix (an online toy store named after her daughter) and Pixie’s Bows, a line of fashion bows aimed at girls (Madigan). Pixie Curtis grew up with her own Instagram account, with her first Instagram post on 18 June 2013, before turning two, and featuring a promotion of an online subscription service for toys, with the hashtag #babblebox. At time of writing, Pixie has 120,000 Instagram followers; her ‘bio’ describes her account as ‘shopping and retail’ and as managed by Jacenko. Pixie is also described as the ‘founder of Pixie’s Pix Toy Store’. Her brother Hunter’s account began on 6 May 2015, with the first post to celebrate his first birthday. Hunter’s page has 20,000 followers with his profile stating that it is managed by his mother and her talent and influencer agency. RQ1: What are the toys featured on the two children’s Instagram sites? The two children feature toy promotions regularly, mostly from Pixie’s online toy shop, with the site tagged @pixiespixonline. These toys are often demonstrated by Pixie and Hunter in short video format, following the now-established genre of the toy unboxing or toy review. Toys that are shown on Pixie’s site (tagged to her toy store) include air-clay (clay designed to be used to create clay sculptures); a Scruff-a-Luv soft toy that mimics a rescue pet that needs to be bathed in water, dried, and groomed to become a ‘lovable’ soft toy pet; toy slime; kinetic sand; Hatchimals (flying fairy/pixie dolls that come out of plastic eggs); LOL OMG dolls and Mermaze (both with accentuated female/made up features). LOL OMG (short for Outrageous Millennial Girls) are described as “fierce, fashionable, fabulous” and their name taps into common language used to communicate while texting. Mermaze are also fashion and hair styling dolls, with a mermaid’s tail that changes colour in water. While predominantly promoting toys on Pixie’s Pix, Pixie posts promotions of other items on her Website aimed at children. This includes practical items such as lunch boxes, but also beauty products including a skin care headband and scented body scrubs. Toys shown on Hunter’s Instagram site are often promotions of his sister’s toy store offerings, but generally fall into the traditional ‘boys’ toys’ categories. The posts that tag the Pixie’s Pix store feature photos or video demonstrations by Hunter of toys, including trucks, slime, ‘Splat balls’ (squish balls), Pokémon cards, Zuru toys’ ‘Smashers’ (dinosaur eggs that are smashed to reveal a dinosaur toy), a Bubblegum simulator for Roblox (a social media platform and game), Needoh Stickums, water bombs, and Hot Wheels. RQ2: Are the toys traditionally gendered and if so, what are the main gender-based toys? Although both children promote gender-neutral sensory toys such as slime and splat balls, they do promote strongly gendered toys from Pixie’s Pix. Hunter also promotes gendered toys that are not tagged to Pixie’s Pix, including Jurassic World dinosaur toys (tying into the film release). One post by Hunter features a (paid) cross-promotion of PlayStation 5 themed Donut King donuts (with a competition to win a PlayStation 5 by buying the donuts). In contrast, Pixie posts a paid promotion of a high-tea event to promote My Little Ponies. Hunter’s posts of toys and leisure items that do not tag Pixie’s toyshop include him on a go-kart, buying rugby gear, and with an ‘airtasker’ (paid assistant) helping him sort his Nerf gun collection. There are posts of both children playing and doing ‘regular’ children’s activities, including sport (Pixie plays netball, Hunter rugby), with their dog, ice-skating, and swimming (albeit often at expensive resorts), while Hunter and Pixie both wear, unbox, and tag some high-end children’s clothes brands such as Balmain and promote department store Myer. RQ3: Do the children promote products that are traditionally aimed at adults? If so, how are these ‘toys’ presented, and what are they? The Cambridge dictionary provides the following two definitions of toys, with one showing that ‘toys’ may also be considered as objects of pleasure for adults. A toy is “an object for children to play with” while it can also be “an object that is used by an adult for pleasure rather than for serious use”. The very meaning of the word toys shows the crossover between the adult and children’s world. The more ‘adult’ products promoted by Pixie are highly gendered, with expensive bags, clothes, make-up, and skin care regularly featured on her account. These are arguably toys but also teen or adult objects of aspiration, with Pixie’s collection of handbags featured and the brand tagged. The bag collection includes brightly coloured bags by Australian designer Poppy Lissiman. Other female-focussed brands include a hairdryer brand, with photos and videos posted of Pixie ‘playing’ at dressing up and ‘getting ready’, using skincare, make-up, and hair products. These toys cater to age demographics older than Pixie. Hunter is pictured in posts on a jet-ski, and in others with a mobile and tablet, or washing a Tesla car and with a helicopter. The gendered tropes of girls being concerned with their appearance, and boys interested in vehicles, action, and competitive (video) games appear to be borne out in the posts from the two children. Discussion and Conclusion As an entrepreneur, Jacenko has capitalised on her daughter’s and son’s personal brands that she has co-created by launching and promoting a toyshop named after her daughter, following the success of her children’s promotion of toys for other companies and Pixie’s successful hairbow line. The toy shop arose out of Pixie promoting sales of fidget spinners during the pandemic lockdowns where toy sales rose sharply across the world. The children are also now on TikTok, and while they have a toy review channel on YouTube it has not been posted on for three years. Therefore, it is safe to assume that Instagram is one of the main channels for the children to promote the toyshop. In an online newspaper article describing the success of Pixie’s toyshop and the purchase of an expensive Mercedes car, Jacenko said that the children work hard, and the car was their “reward” (Scanlan). “The help both her brother and her [Pixie] give me on the buying (every night we work on new style selections and argue over it), the packing, the restocking, goes well beyond their years”, Jacenko is quoted as saying. “We’ve made a pact, we must keep going, work harder. Next, it’s a Rolls Royce.” Analysis of the children’s Instagram pages shows highly gendered promotion of toys. The children also promote a variety of high-end, aspirational tween, teen, and adult ‘toys’, including clothes, make-up, and skincare (Pixie) and expensive cars (Hunter and Pixie). Gender stereotyping has been found in adult influencer content (see, for example, Jorge et al.) and researchers have also pointed to sexualisation of young girl influencers on Instagram (Llovet et al.). Our research potentially echoes these findings. Posts from the children regularly include aspirational commodities that blur the lines between adult and child items of desire. Concerns have been raised in other academic articles (and in government reports) regarding the possible exploitation of children’s labour by parents and marketers to promote brands, including toys, on social media (see, for example, Ågren; De Veirman et al.; House of Commons; Masterson). The French government is believed to be the only government to have moved to regulate regarding the labour of children as social media influencers, and the same government at time of writing was debating laws to enshrine children’s right to privacy on social media, to stop the practice of ‘sharenting’ or parents sharing their children’s images and other content on social media without their children’s consent (Rieffel). Mainstream media including Teen Vogue (Fortesa), and some influencers themselves, have also started to raise issues relevant to ‘kidfluencers’. In the state of Utah, USA, the government has introduced laws to stop children under 18 having access to social media without parents’ consent, although some view this as potentially having some negative impacts (Singer). The ethics and impact of toy advertorials on children by social media influencers, with little or no disclosure of the posts being advertisements, have also been discussed elsewhere (see, for example, House of Commons; Jaakkola), with Rahali and Livingstone offering suggestions aimed key stakeholders. It has been found that beyond the marketing of toys and adult ‘luxuries’ to kids, other products that potentially harm children (for example, junk food and e-cigarettes) are also commonly seen in sponsored content on Instagram and YouTube aimed at children (Fleming‐Milici, Phaneuf, and Harris; Smith et al.). Indeed, it could be argued that e-cigarettes have been positioned as playthings and are appealing to children. While we may bemoan the loss of innocence of children, with the children in this analysis posed by their entrepreneurial mother as purveyors of material goods including toys, it is useful to remember that perhaps it has always been a conundrum, given the purpose of toy marketing is to make commercial sales. Children’s toys have always reflected and shaped society’s culture, often with surprisingly sinister and adult overtones, including the origins of Barbie as a male ‘sex’ toy (Bainbridge) and the blatant promotion of guns and other weapons to boys (for example the famous Mattel ‘burp’ gun of the 50s and 60s), through advertising and sponsorship of television (Hains and Jennings). Recently, fashion house Balenciaga promoted its range of adult bags using children as models via Instagram – the bags are teddy bears dressed in bondage outfits and the marketing stunt caused considerable backlash, with the sexually dressed bears and use of children raising outrage (Deguara). Were these teddy bags framed as children’s toys for adults or adult toys for children? The line was blurred. This research has limitations as it is focussed on a case study in one country (but with global reach through Instagram). However, the current analysis is believed to be one of the first to focus on children’s promotion of toys through Instagram, by two children’s influencers, a relatively new marketing approach aimed at children. As the article was being finalised, the children’s mother announced that as Pixie was transitioning into high school and wanted to focus on her studies rather than running a business, the toy business would conclude but Pixie’s Bows would continue (Madigan). In the UK, recent research by Livingstone et al. for the Digital Futures Commission potentially offers a way forward related to this phenomenon, when viewed alongside the analysis of our case study. Their final report (following research with children) suggests a Playful by Design Tool that would be useful for designers and brands, but also children, parents, regulators, and other stakeholders. Principles such as adopting ethical commercial models, being age-appropriate and ensuring safety, make sense when applied to kidfluencers and those that stand to benefit from their playbour. It appears that governments, society, some academics, and the media are starting to question the current generally unrestricted frameworks related to social media in general (see, for example, the ACCC’s ongoing enquiry) and toy and other marketing by kids to kids on social media specifically (House of Commons). We argue that more frameworks, and potentially laws, are required in this mostly unregulated space. Through our case study we have highlighted key areas of concern on one of the world’s most popular platforms for children and teens, including privacy issues, commodification, and gendered and ‘stealth’ marketing of toys through ‘advertorials’. We also acknowledge that children do gain playful and social benefits and entertainment from seeing influencers online. Given that it has been shown that gendered marketing of toys (and increased focus on appearance for girls through Instagram) could be potentially harmful to children’s self-esteem, and with related concerns on the continued commodification of childhood, further research is also needed to discover the responses and views of children to these advertorials masquerading as cute content. References Abidin, Crystal. "Micromicrocelebrity: Branding Babies on the Internet." M/C Journal 18.5 (2015). <https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1022>. ———. "#Familygoals: Family Influencers, Calibrated Amateurism, and Justifying Young Digital Labor." 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Image 1: A Little Free Library. Image credit: Nadine Kozak.IntroductionLittle Free Libraries give people a reason to stop and exchange things they love: books. It seemed like a really good way to build a sense of community.Dannette Lank, Little Free Library steward, Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, 2013 (Rumage)Against a backdrop of stagnant literacy rates and enduring perceptions of urban decay and the decline of communities in cities (NCES, “Average Literacy”; NCES, “Average Prose”; Putnam 25; Skogan 8), legions of Little Free Libraries (LFLs) have sprung up across the United States between 2009 and the present. LFLs are small, often homemade structures housing books and other physical media for passersby to choose a book to take or leave a book to share with others. People have installed the structures in front of homes, schools, libraries, churches, fire and police stations, community gardens, and in public parks. There are currently 50,000 LFLs around the world, most of which are in the continental United States (Aldrich, “Big”). LFLs encompass building in multiple senses of the term; LFLs are literally tiny buildings to house books and people use the structures for building neighbourhood social capital. The organisation behind the movement cites “building community” as one of its three core missions (Little Free Library). Rowan Moore, theorising humans’ reasons for building, argues desire and emotion are central (16). The LFL movement provides evidence for this claim: stewards erect LFLs based on hope for increased literacy and a desire to build community through their altruistic actions. This article investigates how LFLs build urban community and explores barriers to the endeavour, specifically municipal building and right of way ordinances used in attempts to eradicate the structures. It also examines local responses to these municipal actions and potential challenges to traditional public libraries brought about by LFLs, primarily the decrease of visits to public libraries and the use of LFLs to argue for defunding of publicly provided library services. The work argues that LFLs build community in some places but may threaten other community services. This article employs qualitative content analysis of 261 stewards’ comments about their registered LFLs on the organisation’s website drawn from the two largest cities in a Midwestern state and an interview with an LFL steward in a village in the same state to analyse how LFLs build community. The two cities, located in the state where the LFL movement began, provide a cross section of innovators, early adopters, and late adopters of the book exchanges, determined by their registered charter numbers. Press coverage and municipal documents from six cities across the US gathered through a snowball sample provide data about municipal challenges to LFLs. Blog posts penned by practising librarians furnish some opinions about the movement. This research, while not a representative sample, identifies common themes and issues around LFLs and provides a basis for future research.The act of building and curating an LFL is a representation of shared beliefs about literacy, community, and altruism. Establishing an LFL is an act of civic participation. As Nico Carpentier notes, while some civic participation is macro, carried out at the level of the nation, other participation is micro, conducted in “the spheres of school, family, workplace, church, and community” (17). Ruth H. Landman investigates voluntary activities in the city, including community gardening, and community bakeries, and argues that the people associated with these projects find themselves in a “denser web of relations” than previously (2). Gretchen M. Herrmann argues that neighbourhood garage sales, although fleeting events, build an enduring sense of community amongst participants (189). Ray Oldenburg contends that people create associational webs in what he calls “great good places”; third spaces separate from home and work (20-21). Little Free Libraries and Community BuildingEmotion plays a central role in the decision to become an LFL steward, the person who establishes and maintains the LFL. People recount their desire to build a sense of community and share their love of reading with neighbours (Charter 4684; Charter 8212; Charter 9437; Charter 9705; Charter 16561). One steward in the study reported, “I love books and I want to be able to help foster that love in our neighbourhood as well” (Charter 4369). Image 2: A Little Free Library, bench, water fountain, and dog’s water bowl for passersby to enjoy. Image credit: Nadine Kozak.Relationships and emotional ties are central to some people’s decisions to have an LFL. The LFL website catalogues many instances of memorial LFLs, tributes to librarians, teachers, and avid readers. Indeed, the first Little Free Library, built by Todd Bol in 2009, was a tribute to his late mother, a teacher who loved reading (“Our History”). In the two city study area, ten LFLs are memorials, allowing bereaved families to pass on a loved one’s penchant for sharing books and reading (Charter 1235; Charter 1309; Charter 4604; Charter 6219; Charter 6542; Charter 6954; Charter 10326; Charter 16734; Charter 24481; Charter 30369). In some cases, urban neighbours come together to build, erect, and stock LFLs. One steward wrote: “Those of us who live in this friendly neighborhood collaborated to design[,] build and paint a bungalow themed library” to match the houses in the neighbourhood (Charter 2532). Another noted: “Our neighbor across the street is a skilled woodworker, and offered to build the library for us if we would install it in our yard and maintain it. What a deal!” (Charter 18677). Community organisations also install and maintain LFLs, including 21 in the study population (e.g. Charter 31822; Charter 27155).Stewards report increased communication with neighbours due to their LFLs. A steward noted: “We celebrated the library’s launch on a Saturday morning with neighbors of all ages. We love sitting on our front porch and catching up with the people who stop to check out the books” (Charter 9673). Another exclaimed:within 24 hours, before I had time to paint it, my Little Free Library took on a life of its own. All of a sudden there were lots of books in it and people stopping by. I wondered where these books came from as I had not put any in there. Little kids in the neighborhood are all excited about it and I have met neighbors that I had never seen before. This is going to be fun! (Charter 15981)LFLs build community through social interaction and collaboration. This occurs when neighbours come together to build, install, and fill the structures. The structures also open avenues for conversation between neighbours who had no connection previously. Like Herrmann’s neighbourhood garage sales, LFLs create and maintain social ties between neighbours and link them by the books they share. Additionally, when neighbours gather and communicate at the LFL structure, they create a transitory third space for “informal public life”, where people can casually interact at a nearby location (Oldenburg 14, 288).Building Barriers, Creating CommunityThe erection of an LFL in an urban neighbourhood is not, however, always a welcome sight. The news analysis found that LFLs most often come to the attention of municipal authorities via citizen complaints, which lead to investigations and enforcement of ordinances. In Kansas, a neighbour called an LFL an “eyesore” and an “illegal detached structure” (Tapper). In Wisconsin, well-meaning future stewards contacted their village authorities to ask about rules, inadvertently setting off a six-month ban on LFLs (Stingl; Rumage). Resulting from complaints and inquiries, municipalities regulated, and in one case banned, LFLs, thus building barriers to citizens’ desires to foster community and share books with neighbours.Municipal governments use two major areas of established code to remove or prohibit LFLs: ordinances banning unapproved structures in residents’ yards and those concerned with obstructions to right of ways when stewards locate the LFLs between the public sidewalk and street.In the first instance, municipal ordinances prohibit either front yard or detached structures. Controversies over these ordinances and LFLs erupted in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, in 2012; Leawood, Kansas, in 2014; Shreveport, Louisiana, in 2015; and Dallas, Texas, in 2015. The Village of Whitefish Bay banned LFLs due to an ordinance prohibiting “front yard structures,” including mailboxes (Sanburn; Stingl). In Leawood, the city council argued that an LFL, owned by a nine-year-old boy, violated an ordinance that forbade the construction of any detached structures without city council permission. In Shreveport, the stewards of an LFL received a cease and desist letter from city council for having an “accessory structure” in the front yard (LaCasse; Burris) and Dallas officials knocked on a steward’s front door, informing her of a similar breach (Kellogg).In the second instance, some urban municipalities argued that LFLs are obstructions that block right of ways. In Lincoln, Nebraska, the public works director noted that the city “uses the area between the sidewalk and the street for snow storage in the winter, light poles, mailboxes, things like that.” The director continued: “And I imagine these little libraries are meant to congregate people like a water cooler, but we don’t want people hanging around near the road by the curb” (Heady). Both Lincoln in 2014 and Los Angeles (LA), California, in 2015, cited LFLs for obstructions. In Lincoln, the city notified the Southminster United Methodist Church that their LFL, located between the public sidewalk and street, violated a municipal ordinance (Sanburn). In LA, the Bureau of Street Services notified actor Peter Cook that his LFL, situated in the right of way, was an “obstruction” that Cook had to remove or the city would levy a fine (Moss). The city agreed at a hearing to consider a “revocable permit” for Cook’s LFL, but later denied its issuance (Condes).Stewards who found themselves in violation of municipal ordinances were able to harness emotion and build outrage over limits to individuals’ ability to erect LFLs. In Kansas, the stewards created a Facebook page, Spencer’s Little Free Library, which received over 31,000 likes and messages of support. One comment left on the page reads: “The public outcry will force those lame city officials to change their minds about it. Leave it to the stupid government to rain on everybody’s parade” (“Good”). Children’s author Daniel Handler sent a letter to the nine-year-old steward, writing as Lemony Snicket, “fighting against librarians is immoral and useless in the face of brave and noble readers such as yourself” (Spencer’s). Indeed, the young steward gave a successful speech to city hall arguing that the body should allow the structures because “‘lots of people in the neighborhood used the library and the books were always changing. I think it’s good for Leawood’” (Bauman). Other local LFL supporters also attended council and spoke in favour of the structures (Harper). In LA, Cook’s neighbours started a petition that gathered over 100 signatures, where people left comments including, “No to bullies!” (Lopez). Additionally, neighbours gathered to discuss the issue (Dana). In Shreveport, neighbours left stacks of books in their front yards, without a structure housing them due to the code banning accessory structures. One noted, “I’m basically telling the [Metropolitan Planning Commission] to go sod off” (Friedersdorf; Moss). LFL proponents reacted with frustration and anger at the perceived over-reach of the government toward harmless LFLs. In addition to the actions of neighbours and supporters, the national and local press commented on the municipal constraints. The LFL movement has benefitted from a significant amount of positive press in its formative years, a press willing to publicise and criticise municipal actions to thwart LFL development. Stewards’ struggles against municipal bureaucracies building barriers to LFLs makes prime fodder for the news media. Herbert J. Gans argues an enduring value in American news is “the preservation of the freedom of the individual against the encroachments of nation and society” (50). The juxtaposition of well-meaning LFL stewards against municipal councils and committees provided a compelling opportunity to illustrate this value.National media outlets, including Time (Sanburn), Christian Science Monitor (LaCasse), and The Atlantic, drew attention to the issue. Writing in The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf critically noted:I wish I was writing this to merely extol this trend [of community building via LFLs]. Alas, a subset of Americans are determined to regulate every last aspect of community life. Due to selection bias, they are overrepresented among local politicians and bureaucrats. And so they have power, despite their small-mindedness, inflexibility, and lack of common sense so extreme that they’ve taken to cracking down on Little Free Libraries, of all things. (Friedersdorf, n.p.)Other columnists mirrored this sentiment. Writing in the LA Times, one commentator sarcastically wrote that city officials were “cracking down on one of the country’s biggest problems: small community libraries where residents share books” (Schaub). Journalists argued this was government overreach on non-issues rather than tackling larger community problems, such as income inequality, homelessness, and aging infrastructure (Solomon; Schaub). The protests and negative press coverage led to, in the case of the municipalities with front yard and detached structure ordinances, détente between stewards and councils as the latter passed amendments permitting and regulating LFLs. Whitefish Bay, Leawood, and Shreveport amended ordinances to allow for LFLs, but also to regulate them (Everson; Topil; Siegel). Ordinances about LFLs restricted their number on city blocks, placement on private property, size and height, as well as required registration with the municipality in some cases. Lincoln officials allowed the church to relocate the LFL from the right of way to church property and waived the $500 fine for the obstruction violation (Sanburn). In addition to the amendments, the protests also led to civic participation and community building including presentations to city council, a petition, and symbolic acts of defiance. Through this protest, neighbours create communities—networks of people working toward a common goal. This aspect of community building around LFLs was unintentional but it brought people together nevertheless.Building a Challenge to Traditional Libraries?LFL marketing and communication staff member Margaret Aldrich suggests in The Little Free Library Book that LFLs are successful because they are “gratifyingly doable” projects that can be accomplished by an individual (16). It is this ease of building, erecting, and maintaining LFLs that builds concern as their proliferation could challenge aspects of library service, such as public funding and patron visits. Some professional librarians are in favour of the LFLs and are stewards themselves (Charter 121; Charter 2608; Charter 9702; Charter 41074; Rumage). Others envision great opportunities for collaboration between traditional libraries and LFLs, including the library publicising LFLs and encouraging their construction as well as using LFLs to serve areas without, or far from, a public library (Svehla; Shumaker). While lauding efforts to build community, some professional librarians question the nomenclature used by the movement. They argue the phrase Little Free Libraries is inaccurate as libraries are much more than random collections of books. Instead, critics contend, the LFL structures are closer to book swaps and exchanges than actual libraries, which offer a range of services such as Internet access, digital materials, community meeting spaces, and workshops and programming on a variety of topics (American Library Association; Annoyed Librarian). One university reference and instruction librarian worries about “the general public’s perception and lumping together of little free libraries and actual ‘real’ public libraries” (Hardenbrook). By way of illustration, he imagines someone asking, “‘why do we need our tax money to go to something that can be done for FREE?’” (Hardenbrook). Librarians holding this perspective fear the movement might add to a trend of neoliberalism, limiting or ending public funding for libraries, as politicians believe that the localised, individual solutions can replace publicly funded library services. This is a trend toward what James Ferguson calls “responsibilized” citizens, those “deployed to produce governmentalized results that do not depend on direct state intervention” (172). In other countries, this shift has already begun. In the United Kingdom (UK), governments are devolving formerly public services onto community groups and volunteers. Lindsay Findlay-King, Geoff Nichols, Deborah Forbes, and Gordon Macfadyen trace the impacts of the 2012 Localism Act in the UK, which caused “sport and library asset transfers” (12) to community and volunteer groups who were then responsible for service provision and, potentially, facility maintenance as well. Rather than being in charge of a “doable” LFL, community groups and volunteers become the operators of much larger facilities. Recent efforts in the US to privatise library services as governments attempt to cut budgets and streamline services (Streitfeld) ground this fear. Image 3: “Take a Book, Share a Book,” a Little Free Library motto. Image credit: Nadine Kozak. LFLs might have real consequences for public libraries. Another potential unintended consequence of the LFLs is decreasing visits to public libraries, which could provide officials seeking to defund them with evidence that they are no longer relevant or necessary. One LFL steward and avid reader remarked that she had not used her local public library since 2014 because “I was using the Little Free Libraries” (Steward). Academics and librarians must conduct more research to determine what impact, if any, LFLs are having on visits to traditional public libraries. ConclusionLittle Free Libraries across the United States, and increasingly in other countries, have generated discussion, promoted collaboration between neighbours, and led to sharing. In other words, they have built communities. This was the intended consequence of the LFL movement. There, however, has also been unplanned community building in response to municipal threats to the structures due to right of way, safety, and planning ordinances. The more threatening concern is not the municipal ordinances used to block LFL development, but rather the trend of privatisation of publicly provided services. While people are celebrating the community built by the LFLs, caution must be exercised lest central institutions of the public and community, traditional public libraries, be lost. Academics and communities ought to consider not just impact on their local community at the street level, but also wider structural concerns so that communities can foster many “great good places”—the Little Free Libraries and traditional public libraries as well.ReferencesAldrich, Margaret. “Big Milestone for Little Free Library: 50,000 Libraries Worldwide.” Little Free Library. 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Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2004.“Good Luck Spencer.” Spencer’s Little Free Library Facebook Page 25 Jun. 2014. 26 Mar. 2017 <https://www.facebook.com/Spencerslittlefreelibrary/photos/pcb.527531327376433/527531260709773/?type=3>.Hardenbrook, Joe. “A Little Rant on Little Free Libraries (AKA Probably an Unpopular Post).” Mr. Library Dude (9 Apr. 2014). 25 Feb. 2017 <https://mrlibrarydude.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/a-little-rant-on-little-free-libraries-aka-probably-an-unpopular-post/>.Harper, Deb. “Minutes.” The Leawood City Council 7 Jul. 2014. <http://www.leawood.org/pdf/cc/min/07-07-14.pdf>. Heady, Chris. “City Wants Church to Move Little Library.” Lincoln Journal Star 9 Jul. 2014. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://journalstar.com/news/local/city-wants-church-to-move-little-library/article_7753901a-42cd-5b52-9674-fc54a4d51f47.html>. Herrmann, Gretchen M. “Garage Sales Make Good Neighbors: Building Community through Neighborhood Sales.” Human Organization 62.2 (2006): 181-191.Kellogg, Carolyn. “Officials Threaten to Destroy a Little Free Library in Texas.” Los Angeles Times (1 Oct. 2015). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-little-free-library-texas-20150930-story.html>.LaCasse, Alexander. “Why Are Some Cities Cracking Down on Little Free Libraries.” Christian Science Monitor (5 Feb. 2015). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2015/0205/Why-are-some-cities-cracking-down-on-little-free-libraries>.Landman, Ruth H. Creating the Community in the City: Cooperatives and Community Gardens in Washington, DC Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1993. Little Free Library. 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Average Prose, Document, and Quantitative Literacy Scores of Adults: 1992 and 2003. National Assessment of Adult Literacy. 25 Feb. 2017 <https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp>.Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. New York: Marlowe & Company, 1999.“Our History.” Little Free Library. Little Free Library Organization (2017). 25 Feb. 2017 <https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourhistory/>.Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.Rumage, Jeff. “Little Free Libraries Now Allowed in Whitefish Bay.” Whitefish Bay Patch (8 May 2013). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://patch.com/wisconsin/whitefishbay/little-free-libraries-now-allowed-in-whitefish-bay>.Sanburn, Josh. “What Do Kansas and Nebraska Have against Small Libraries?” Time 10 Jul. 2014. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://time.com/2970649/tiny-libraries-violating-city-ordinances/>.Schaub, Michael. “Little Free Libraries on the Wrong Side of the Law.” LA Times 4 Feb. 2015. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-little-free-libraries-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-law-20150204-story.html>.Shumaker, David. “Public Libraries, Little Free Libraries, and Embedded Librarians.” The Embedded Librarian (28 April 2014) 26 Mar. 2017 <https://embeddedlibrarian.com/2014/04/28/public-libraries-little-free-libraries-and-embedded-librarians/>.Siegel, Julie. “An Ordinance to Amend Section 16.13 of the Municipal Code with Regard to Exempt Certain Little Free Libraries from Front Yard Setback Requirements.” Village of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin (5 Aug. 2013).Skogan, Wesley G. Police and Community in Chicago: A Tale of Three Cities. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.Solomon, Dan. “Dallas Is Regulating ‘Little Free Libraries’ for Some Reason.” Texas Monthly (14 Sept. 2016). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/dallas-regulating-little-free-libraries-reason/>.“Spencer’s Little Free Library.” Facebook 15 Jul. 2014. 25 Feb. 2017 <https://www.facebook.com/Spencerslittlefreelibrary/photos/pcb.527531327376433/527531260709773/?type=3>.Steward, M. Personal Interview. 7 Feb. 2017.Stingl, Jim. “Village Slaps Endnote on Little Libraries.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 11 Nov. 2012: 1B, 7B.Streitfeld, David. “Anger as a Private Company Takes over Libraries.” The New York Times (26 Sept. 2010). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html>.Svehla, Louise. “Little Free Libraries—The Possibilities Are Endless.” Public Libraries Online (8 Mar. 2013). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://publiclibrariesonline.org/2013/03/little-free-libraries-the-possibilities-are-endless/>.Tapper, Jake. “Boy Fights Council to Save His Library.” CNN 4 Jul. 2014. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/04/boy-fights-to-save-his-library/>.Topil, Greg. “Little Free Libraries in Lincoln.” City of Lincoln, Nebraska (n.d.). 25 Feb. 2017 <http://lincoln.ne.gov/City/pworks/engine/row/little-library.htm>.

Introduction: Shock WavesAs I carefully unfold the delicate piece of crisp white paper, three rogue words wildly jump up off the page before sinking deeply into my skin: “Cold and condescending.” A charge of anger surges up my spine, as these words begin to now expand and affectively resonate: “I found the instructor to be cold and condescending.” Somehow, these words impact me both emotionally and physiologically (Brennan 3): my heart beats faster, my body temperature rises, my stomach aches. Yet, despite how awful I feel, I keep on reading, as if compelled by some inexplicable force. It is not long before I devour the entire evaluation—or perhaps it devours me?—reading every last jarring word over and over and over again. And pretty soon, before I can even think about it, I begin to come undone ...How is it possible that an ordinary, everyday object can pull at us, unravel us even? And, how do such objects linger, register intensities, and contribute to our harm or good? In this paper, we draw upon our collective teaching experiences at college and high school level in order to explore how teacher evaluations actively work/ed to orient our bodies in molar and molecular ways (Deleuze and Guattari 3), thereby diminishing or enhancing our capacity to act. We argue that these textual objects are anything but dead and lifeless, and are vitally invested with “thing-power,” which is the “ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle” (Bennett 6).Rather than producing a linear critique that refuses “affective associations” (Felski para. 6) and the “bodily entanglements of language” (MacLure, Qualitative 1000), we offer up a mobile conversation that pulls readers into an assemblage of (shape)shifting moments they can connect with (Rajchman 4) and question. While we attend to our own affective experiences with teacher evaluations, we wish to disrupt the idea that the self is both autonomous and affectively contained (Brennan 2). Instead, we imagine a self that extends into other bodies, spaces, and things, and highlight how teacher evaluations, as a particular thing, curiously animate (Chen 30) and affect our social worlds—altering our life course for a minute, a day, or perhaps, indefinitely (Stewart 12).* * *“The autobiographical is not the personal. […] Publics presume intimacy” (Berlant, The Female vii). Following Berlant, we propose that our individual narratives are always tangled up in other social bodies and are, therefore, not quite our own. Although we do use the word “I” to recount our specific experiences of teacher evaluations, we by no means wish to suggest that we are self-contained subjects confessing some singular life history or detached truth. Rather, together we examine the tensions, commonalities, possibilities, and threats that encounters with teacher evaluations produce within and around collective bodies (Stewart). We consider the ways in which these material objects seep deeply into our skin, re/animate moving forces (e.g. neoliberalism, patriarchy), and even trigger us emotionally by transporting us back to different times and places (S. Jones 525). And, we write to experiment (Deleuze and Guattari 1; Stewart 1) with the kind of “unpredictable intimacy” that Berlant (Intimacy 281; Structures 191) speaks of. We resist (as best we can) telos-driven tales that do not account for messiness, disorientation, surprise, or wonder (MacLure, Classification 180), as we invite readers to move right along beside (Sedgwick 8) us in this journey to embrace the complexities and implications (Nelson 111; Talburt 93) of teacher evaluations as corporeal matters. The “self” is no match for such affective entanglements (Stewart 58).Getting Un/Stuck “Cold and condescending.” I cannot help but get caught up in these words—no matter how hard I try. A million thoughts begin to bubble up: Am I a good teacher? A bad person? Uncaring? Arrogant? And, just like that, the ordinary turns on me (Stewart 106), triggering intense sensations that refuse to stay buried. What began as my reaction to a teacher evaluation soon becomes something else, somewhere else. Childhood wounds unexpectedly well up—leaking into the present, spreading uncontrollably, causing my body to get stuck in long ago and far away.In a virtual flash (Deleuze and Guattari 94), I am somehow in my grandmother’s kitchen once more, which even now smells of avgolemono soup, warm bread rising, home. Something sparks, as distant memories come flooding back to change my course and set me straight (or so I think). When I was a little girl and could not let something go, my yiayia (grandmother) Vasiliki would tell me, quite simply, to get “unstuck” (ξεκολλά). The Greeks, it seems, know something about the stickiness of affective attachments. Even though it has been over twenty years since my grandmother’s passing, her words, still alive, affectively ring in my ear. Out of some kind of charged habit (Stewart 16), her words now escape my mouth: “ξεκολλά,” I command, “ξεκολλά!” I repeat this phrase so many times that it becomes a mantra, but its magic has sadly lost all effect. No matter what I say or what I do, my body, stuck in repetition, “closes in on itself, unable to transmit its intensities differently” (Grosz 171). In an act of desperation (or perhaps survival), I rip the evaluation to shreds and throw the tattered remains down the trash chute. Yet, my actions prove futile. The evaluation lives on in a kind of afterlife, with its haunting ability to affect where my thoughts will go and what my body can do. And so, my agency—my ability to act, think, become (Deleuze and Guattari 361)—is inextricably twisted up in this evaluation, with its affective capacity to connect many “bodies” at once (both material and semiotic, human and non-human, living and dead).A View from Nowhere?At both college and school-level, formal teacher evaluations promise anonymity. Why is it, though, that students get to be voices without bodies: a voice that does not emerge from a complex, contradictory, and messy body, but rather “from above, from nowhere” (Haraway 589)? Once disembodied, students become god-like (Haraway 589), able to “objectively” dissect, judge, and even criticise teachers, while they themselves receive “panoptic immunity” (MacLure, Classification 168).This immunity has its consequences. Within formal and informal evaluations, students write of and about bodies in ways that often feel violating. Teachers’ bodies become spectacle, and anything goes:“Professor is kinda hot—not bad to look at!”“She dresses like a bag lady. [...] Her hair and clothing need an update.”“There's absolutely nothing redeeming about her as a person [...] but she has nice shoes.”(PrawfsBlog)Amid these affective violations, voices without bodies re/assemble into “voices without organs” (Mazzei 732)—a voice that emanates from an assemblage of bodies, not a singular subject. In this process, patriarchal discourses, as bodies of thought, dangerously spring up and swirl about. The voyeuristic gaze of patriarchy (see de Beauvoir; Mulvey) becomes habitual, shaping our stories, encounters, and sense of self.Female teachers, in particular, cannot deny its pull. The potential to create and/or transmit knowledge turns us into “risky subjects” in need of constant surveillance (Falter 29). Teacher evaluations do their part. As a metaphoric panopticon (see Foucault), they transform female teachers into passive spectacles—objects of the gaze—and students into active spectators who have “all the power to determine our teaching success” (Falter 30). The effects linger, do real damage (Stewart), and cause our pedagogical performances to fail every now and then. After all, a “good” female teacher is also a “good female subject” who is called upon to impart knowledge in ways that do not betray her otherwise feminine or motherly “nature” (Falter 28). This pressure to be both knowledgeable and nurturing, while displaying a “visible fragility [...] a kind of conventional feminine vulnerability” (McRobbie 79), pervades the social and is intense. Although it is not easy to navigate, the fact that unrecognisable bodies are subject to punishment (Butler, Performative 528) helps keep power dynamics firmly in place. These forces permeate my body, as well, making me “cold” and “unfair” in one evaluation and “kind” and “sweet” in another—but rarely smart or intelligent. Like clockwork, this bodily visibility and regulation brings with it never-ending self-critique and self-discipline (Harris 9). Absorbing these swarming intensities, I begin to question my capacity to effectively teach and form relationships with my students. Days later, weeks later, years later, I continue to wonder: if even one student leaves my class feeling “bad,” do I have any business being a teacher? Ugh, the docile, good girl (Harris 19) rears her ugly (or is it pretty?) head once again. TranscorporealityEven though the summer sun invites me in, I spend the whole day at home, in bed, unable to move. At one point, a friend arrives, forcing me to get up and get out. We grab a bite to eat, and it is not long before I confess my deepest fear: that my students are right about me, that these evaluations somehow mark me as a horrible teacher and person. She seems surprised that I would let a few comments defeat me and asks me what this is really all about. I shrug my shoulders, unwilling to go there.Later that night, I find myself re-reading my spring evaluations online. The positive ones electrify the screen, filling me with joy, as the constructive ones get me brainstorming about ways I might do things differently. And while I treasure these comments, I do not focus too much on them. Instead, I spend most of the evening replaying a series of negative tapes over and over in my head. Somewhat defeated, I slip slowly back into my bed and find that it surprisingly offers me a kind of comfort that my friend does not. I wonder, “What body am I now in the arms of” (Chen 202)? The bed and I become “interporous” (Chen 203), intimate even. There is much solace in the darkness of those lively, billowy blue covers: a peculiar solace made possible by these evaluations—a thing which compels me to find comfort somewhere, anywhere, beyond the human body.The GhostAs a high school teacher, I was accustomed to being reviewed. Some reviews were posted onto the website ratemyteacher.com, a platform of anonymously submitted reviews of kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers on easiness, helpfulness, clarity, knowledge, textbook use, and exam difficulty. Others were less official; irate commentary posted on social media platforms or baldly concise characterisations of our teaching styles that circulated among students and bounded back to us as hearsay and whispered asides. In these reviews, our teacher-selves were constructed: One became the easy teacher, the mean teacher, the fun teacher, or the hard-but-good teacher. The teacher who could not control her class; the teacher who controlled her class excessively.Sometimes, we googled ourselves because it was tempting to do so (and near-impossible not to). One day, I searched various forms of my name followed by the name of the school. One of my students, a girl with hot pink streaks in her hair and pointy studs shooting out of her belt and necklaces, had written a complaint on Facebook about a submission of a final writing portfolio. The student wrote on the publicly visible wall of another student in my class, noting how much she still had left to do on the assignment. Dotting the observation with expletives, she bemoaned the portfolio as requiring too much work. Then, she observed that I had an oily complexion and wrote that I was a “dyke.” After I read the comment, I closed my laptop and an icy wave passed through me. That night, I went to dinner with friends. I ruminated aloud over the comments: How could this student—with whom I had thought I had a good relationship—write about me in such a derisive manner? And what, in particular, about my appearance conveyed that I was lesbian? My friends laughed; they found the student’s comments funny and indicative of the blunt astuteness of teenagers. As I thought about the comments, I realised the pain lay in the comments’ specificity. They demonstrated the ability of the student to perceive and observe a bodily attribute about which I was particularly insecure. It made me wonder about the countless other eyes and glances directed at me each day, taking in, noticing, and dissecting my bodily self (McRobbie 63).The next morning, before school, I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror and dabbed toner on my skin. Today, I thought, today will be a day in which both my skin texture and my lesson plans will be in good order. After this day, I could no longer bring myself to look this student directly in the eye. I was officious in our interactions. I read her poetry and essays with guarded ambivalence. I decided that I would no longer google myself. I would no longer click on links that were pointedly reviews of me as a teacher.The reviewed-self is a ghost-self. It is a shadow, an underbelly. The comments—perhaps posted in a moment of anger or frustration—linger. Years later, though I have left full-time classroom teaching, I still think about them. I have not recovered from the comments though I should, apparently, have already recuperated from their sharp effects. I wonder if the reviews will ceaselessly follow me, if they will shape the impressions of those who google me, if my reviewed-self will become the first and most formidable impression of those who might come to know me, if my reviewed-self will be the lasting and most formidable way I see myself.Trigger Happy In 2014, a teacher at a California public high school posts a comment on Twitter about wishing to pour coffee on her students. Some of her students this year, she writes, make her “trigger finger itchy” (see Oakley). She already “wants to stab” them a mere two weeks into the school year. “Is that bad?” she asks. One of her colleagues screen-captures her tweets and sends them to the school principal and to a local newspaper. They go viral, resulting in widespread condemnation on the Internet. She is named the “worst teacher ever” by one online media outlet (Parker). The media swarm the school. The reporters interview parents in minivans who are picking up their children from school. One parent, from behind the steering wheel, expresses her disapproval of the teacher. She says, “As a teacher, I think she should be held to a higher accountability than other people” (Louie). In the comments section of an article, a commenter declares that the “mutant should be fired” (Oakley). Others are more forgiving. They cite their boyfriends and sisters who are teachers and who also air grievances, though somewhat less violently and in the privacy of their homes (A. Jones). All teachers have these thoughts, some of the commenters argue, they just are not stupid enough to tweet them.In her own defence, the teacher tells a local paper that she “never expected anyone would take me seriously” (Oakley). As a teacher, she is often “forced to cultivate a ‘third-person consciousness,’ to be an ‘objectified subject’” (Chen 33) on display, so can we really blame her? If she had thought people would take her seriously, “you'd better believe I would have been much more careful with what I've said” (Oakley). The students are the least offended party because, as their teacher had hoped, they do not take her tweets seriously. In fact, they are “laughing it off,” according to a local news channel (Newark Teacher). In a news interview, one female student says she finds the teacher’s tweets humorous. They are fond of this teacher and believe she cares about her students. Seemingly, they do not mind that their teacher—jokingly, of course—harbours homicidal thoughts about them or that she wishes to splash hot coffee in their faces.There is a certain wisdom in the teacher’s observational, if foolhardy, tweeting. In a tweet tagged #secretlyhateyou, the teacher explains that while students may have their own negative feelings towards their teachers, teachers also have such feelings for their students. But, she tweets, “We are just not allowed to show it” (Oakley). At parties and social gatherings, we perform the cheerful educator by leaving our bodies at the door and giving into “the politics of emotion, the unwritten rules that feelings are to be ‘privatised’ and ‘pathologised’ rather than aired” (Thiel 39). At times, we are allowed a certain level of dissatisfaction, an eye roll or shrug of the shoulders, a whimsical, breathy sigh: “Oh you know! Kids today! Instagram! Sexting!” But we cannot express dislike for our own students.One evening, I was on the train with a friend who does not work as a teacher. We observed a pack of teenagers, screaming and grabbing at each other’s cell phones. The friend said, “Aren’t they so fascinating, teenagers?” Grumpily, I disagreed. On that day, no, I was not fascinated by teenagers. My friend responded, shocked, “But don’t you work as a teacher…?” It is an unspoken requirement of the job. We maintain relentless expressions of joy, an earnest wonderment towards those whom we teach. And we are, too, appalled by those who do not exhibit a constant stream of cheerfulness. The teachers’ lunchroom is the repository for “bad” feelings about students, a site of negative feelings that can somehow stick (Ahmed, Happy 29) to those who choose to eat their lunch within this space. Only the most jaded battle-axes would opt to eat in the lunchroom. Good teachers—happy and caring ones—would never choose to eat lunch in this room. Instead, they eat lunch in their classrooms, alone, prepare dutifully for the afternoon’s classes, and try to contain all of their murderous inclinations. But (as the media love to remind us), whether intended or not, our corporeal bodies with all their “unwanted affects” (Brennan 3, 11) have a funny way of “surfacing” (Ahmed, Communities 14).Conclusion: Surging BodiesAffects surge within everyday conversations of teacher evaluations. In fact, it is almost impossible to talk about evaluations without sparking some sort of heated response. Recent New York Times articles echo the more popular sentiments: from the idea that evaluations are gendered and raced (Pratt), to the prevailing notion that students are informed consumers entitled to “the best return out of their educational investments” (Stankiewicz). Evidently, education is big business. So, we take our cues from neoliberal ideologies, as we struggle to make sense of all the fissures and leaks. Teachers’ bodies now become commodified objects within a market model that promises customer satisfaction—and the customer is always right.“Develop a thicker skin,” they say, as if a thicker skin could contain my affects or prevent other affects from seeping in; “my body is and is not mine” (Butler, Precarious 26). Leaky bodies, with their permeable borders (Renold and Mellor 33), affectively flow into all kinds of “things.” Likewise, teacher evaluations, as objects, extend into human bodies, sending eruptive charges that both register within the body and transmit outward into the environment. These charges emerge as upset, judgment, wonder, sadness, confusion, annoyance, pleasure, and everything in between. They embody an intensity that animates our social worlds, working to enhance energies and/or diminish them. Affects, then, do not just come from, and stay within, bodies (Brennan 10). A body, as an assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari 4), is neither self-contained nor disconnected from other bodies, spaces, and things.As a collection of sticky, “material, physiological things” (Brennan 6), teacher evaluations are very much alive: vibrantly shifting and transforming teachers’ affective capacities and life trajectories. Attending to them as such offers a way in which to push back against our own bodily erasure or “the screaming absence in [American] education of any attention to the inner life of teachers” (Taubman 3). While affect itself has become a recent hot-topic across American university campuses (e.g. see “trigger warnings” debates, Halberstam), conversations tend to exclude teachers’ bodies. So, for example, we can talk of creating “safe [classroom] spaces” in order to safeguard students’ feelings. We can even warn learners if material might offend, as well as watch what we say and do in an effort to protect students from any potential trauma. But we cannot, it would seem, matter, too. Instead, we must (if good and caring) be on affective autopilot, where we can only have “good” thoughts about students. We are not really allowed to feel what we feel, express raw emotion, have a body—unless, of course, that body transmits feel-good intensities.And, feeling bad about teacher evaluations ... well, for the most part, that needs to remain a dirty little secret, because, how can you possibly let yourself get so hot and bothered over a thing—a mere object? Yet, teacher evaluations can and do impact our lives, often in ways that are harmful: by inflicting pain, triggering trauma, encouraging sexism and objectification. But maybe, just maybe, they even offer up some good. After all, if teacher evaluations teach us anything, it is this: you are not simply a body, but rather, an “array of bodies” (Bennett 112, emphasis added)—and your body, my body, our bodies “must be heard” (Cixous 880).ReferencesAhmed, Sara. “Happy Objects.” The Affect Theory Reader. Eds. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth. 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