Brooklyn Decker (born April 12, 1987) is an American fashion model best known for her appearances in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, including the cover of the 2010 issue. In addition to also working for Victoria’s Secret, she has ventured into television with guest appearances on shows like Ugly Betty and Royal Pains. She is married to American tennis player Andy Roddick.

Bar Refaeli (Hebrew: בר רפאלי‎, born 4 June 1985) is an Israeli model and occasional actress, most known for her modelling work and for her relationship with American actor Leonardo DiCaprio. She was the cover model of the 2009 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

Christine Teigen (born November 30, 1985, Delta, Utah) is an American model of Thai-Norwegian heritage. She made her rookie debut in the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 2010.

Dominique Piek (born 13 July 1985) is a South African model. She comes from a small town in South Africa called Somerset West, her mother, Felicity, is an english teacher and her father ,Jan, is a dentist. She has two siblings who are 3 years her junior (Ruan and Amee), they are twins.She started modeling at 14, starting off in London, Tokyo and Paris after she finished high school.
She was on the cover of the South African Sports Illustrated Swimwear issue in 2007 as well as GQ, 3 covers for Cosmopolitan (2003, 2004 and 2009), Shape, Biba and many more. Her big break happened when she was chosen as one of the rookies (and first South African model in the magazine) in the 2010 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue that hit the shelves on the 9th of February 2010.

Will Smith’s son Jaden Smith stars in this updated version of the 1980’s film that starred Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita.

While the new film will be set in Beijing, China, it will borrow elements of the original plot, wherein a bullied youth learns to stand up for himself with the help of an eccentric mentor.

Jaden Smith’s character moves to Beijing with his mother, where he encounters a bully situation similar to Macchio’s in his new locale. Smith’s character will be named Dre instead of Daniel, and take lessons from Chinese martial arts master Mr. Han, played by Jackie Chan.

Whereas Daniel Larusso and his mother faced a regional move across the United States in the the first film, the producers say the script will escalate language barrier conflicts and an international collision of world views into the bully-victim-turned-martial-artist tale.

12-year-old Dre Parker could’ve been the most popular kid in Detroit, but his mother’s latest career move has landed him in China. Dre immediately falls for his classmate Mei Ying – and the feeling is mutual – but cultural differences make such a friendship impossible. Even worse, Dre’s feelings make an enemy of the class bully, Cheng. In the land of kung fu, Dre knows only a little karate, and Cheng puts “the karate kid” on the floor with ease. With no friends in a strange land, Dre has nowhere to turn but maintenance man Mr. Han, who is secretly a master of kung fu. As Han teaches Dre that kung fu is not about punches and parries, but maturity and calm, Dre realizes that facing down the bullies will be the fight of his life. Written by Columbia Pictures

Release Date:11 June 2010 (USA)

Cast

Jaden Smith … Dre Parker

Jackie Chan … Mr. Han

Taraji P. Henson

Tess Liu … History Teacher

Produced by
Susan Ekins …. executive producer
Sanping Han …. executive producer
James Lassiter …. producer
Jada Pinkett Smith …. producer
Will Smith …. producer
Ken Stovitz …. producer
Jerry Weintraub …. producer
Dany Wolf …. executive producer

Blah Blah Blah (MTV PUSH) from KeshaSebert.org on Vimeo.

Tila Tequila

It all started around 8:00 AM when Tila posted the following message on her Twitter page: “I just woke up in the middle of the night cuz im having these intense sharp pains in my belly.”

Several minutes later, Tila added, “Something is definitely wrong. The hospital gave me a list of symptoms & this is one of them.” Suddenly, Tila began writing several messages about suicide, claiming, “I told my friend I would just kill myself if anything ever happened.” In her latest message, Tila claims she’s going to try to sleep it off … before she hops on a 22 hour flight to Australia.

Posted Feb 15th 2010 10:56AM by TMZ Staff

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Tila Nguyen (born October 24, 1981), better known by her stage name Tila Tequila, is a Singapore-born singer, model, and television personality. She is known for her appearances in the men’s magazines Stuff, Maxim, Penthouse, her role as host of the Fuse TV show featuring performance striptease, Pants-Off Dance-Off and her position as the most popular artist on MySpace (according to page views) circa April 2006.^[3] She was raised in Houston, Texas and now lives in West Hollywood, California. Her MTV reality show A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila aired for two seasons.

Early life

Nguyen was born in Singapore to French Vietnamese parents,^[1] where her family emigrated from Vietnam after the Vietnam War. She is the youngest of three children: she has one brother, Daniel (b. 1976), and a sister, Terri (b. 1979). When she was one year old, she and her family lived in a neighborhood in Houston until they were admitted to a gated community run by a strict Buddhist temple. The family left the community when Nguyen was eight.

While in middle school, Nguyen became a tomboy and was eventually sent to a boarding school for six months for her combative behavior before transferring to another school. While in high school, she used her sister’s identification card to enter nightclubs, where she began taking drugs and joined a gang. In her memoir, she would later explain that she felt “confused” and “lost” from various personal family and environmental issues and remained a virgin until she reached 15 years of age, when she also began smoking and engaging in drug abuse. She received her first of a series of tattoos, a scorpion on her back, during this time. She also states that she recalled “punching walls until I passed out”, and soon turned to writing poems in an attempt to release powerful emotions. In an interview with Import Tuner, Nguyen said she had been searching for a sense of identity: “I was really confused then, [because] at first I thought I was black, then I thought I was Hispanic and joined a cholo gang“. Later, friends outside the gang briefly helped turn her life around. However, her past caught up with her, and she fled to Queens, New York at the age of 16. While still 16, she experienced a drive-by shooting in Houston. The following year, she became pregnant and suffered a miscarriage.

Career

Modeling and acting

Nguyen’s career began at the age of 18 when she was discovered at the Sharpstown Mall by a Playboy scout and was offered a chance to model nude for the magazine. She did a test shoot, then eventually moved to Southern California and was featured as Playboy’s Cyber Girl of the week on April 22, 2002, and soon thereafter she became the first Asian Cyber Girl of the Month. A few more pictorials for the magazine followed.

Nguyen gained further popularity through the import racing scene. She has been featured on the cover of Import Tuner magazine, at car shows such as Hot Import Nights, and in the video game Street Racing Syndicate. In 2003, she was a contestant on VH1’s Surviving Nugent, a reality TV show where participants performed compromising tasks and stunts for rock star Ted Nugent She was also the most frequent host on the first season of Fuse TV’s dance show, Pants-Off Dance-Off, on which a group of contestants strip to music videos.

Nguyen was featured on the cover of the April 2006 issue of Stuff magazine; in the interview, she claimed that her nickname “Tila Tequila” came about when she experimented with alcohol at the age of thirteen.^[17] She appeared on the August 2006 Maxim UK cover, was named #88 in their Hot 100 List, and also appeared in the December 2007 issue. She was ranked #100 on the Maxim Hot 100 list in 2008.

Tequila made an appearance as one of the 12 strangers in the first game on the April 6, 2007 episode of NBC’s game show Identity. On March 4, 2007 she made a cameo appearance on the show “War At Home.“^[21] She also appeared as a Hooters Girl in the 2007 film I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

Reality television

On March 26, 2007, Tequila announced in her MySpace blog that she would be filming a reality show for VH1. Filming started in May 2007, but the show was moved to VH1’s sister network MTV that summer. On October 9, 2007, A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila aired on MTV. The program is a bisexual-themed reality dating show where 16 straight men and sixteen lesbian women compete for Tequila’s affections, the twist being that the contestants were not aware of her bisexuality until the end of the first episode. The ten-episode series is produced by 495 Productions and MTV.

Tequila in October 2007

The show was at the heart of a heated online debate between Tequila and conservative Christians after an article appeared on The Christian Post on September 13, 2007. After seeing the article, Tequila wrote an impassioned response in her blog on September 28, 2007, criticizing churches for “bashing” the gay community while thanking God for saving her life.

The show premiered for a second season in April 2008 and became a popular gossip subject in Asian media, such as AsianWeek. The season finale premiered July 8, 2008, the winner being Kristy Morgan who declined her “shot at love”. A new season of the series was announced. However, bisexual twin women were the bachelorettes.

Tequila was also a contestant on Ted Nugent’s 2003 reality show “Surviving Nugent”, which was filmed on his ranch in Jackson, Michigan.

Online business ventures

In July 2001, Nguyen started up her website entitled “Tila’s Hot Spot”. Originally it was a website featuring her information, quotes, blog, and pictorials including content that required adult verification and a monthly payment fee to view. Later, the site format was revamped by TAJ Designs Inc. to feature all-ages content and information to promote her current career, business ventures, personal information, and a premium membership section including videos, non-nude picture galleries, blogs, and chat sessions. In 2008, Buzznet partnered with Tequila to transfer the site and transform it into a social network.

During 2005 Nguyen launched Tilafashion.com, a site featuring her custom line of clothing for men and women originally using the slogan “So hot you’ll just want to take it all off!” In 2006 Tila created a website entitled “Tila Zone,” which features content to use on Myspace and other social networking websites including layouts, widgets, and clipart.

Music

Tequila at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards

Nguyen used modeling as a stepping stone for other ventures. At age 20, she acted on her interest in rock music and started looking for bands willing to have her join. She eventually assembled a band called Beyond Betty Jean, for which she was singer and songwriter. Following the breakup of Beyond Betty Jean, Nguyen started working in recording studios to sharpen her vocal skills and wrote music.^] Later, she became the lead singer of a band called Jealousy, which released a few songs online before breaking up. Around this time, she began to establish the stage name of “Tila Tequila”.

A major turn in Tequila’s music career occurred during the April 24, 2006 taping of MTV’s Total Request Live. In an interview with the TRL VJs, will.i.am announced that Tequila was signed to the Will.I.Am music group, a record label under A&M Records. Despite her major-label signing, Tequila independently released her first single “I Love U” through iTunes on February 27, 2007, justifying the independent release through her desire to become famous by herself. She shot a music video for the song, which is available for free after the song is downloaded. A preview for the video debuted on February 14, 2007 on her MySpace page.

In March 2007, Washington-based record label The Saturday Team released an EP called Sex, by Tila Tequila. On July 27, 2007, Italian website MusicBlob reported that The Saturday Team and distributor Icon Music Entertainment Services sued Nguyen over breaching her contract related to the album. However, Tila claimed in a MySpace bulletin that the EP was not authorized for release by her, and was removed from most retailers. The Saturday Team won a legal case, making Sex available for digital purchase.

On October 9, 2007, the same day her reality show A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila premiered, Tequila released her second official single, “Stripper Friends“.^[39] In mid-November, Tequila shot the video for her third single “Paralyze“.

She shot the music video for “Stripper Friends” in early December 2007 at a Los Angeles strip club. The video premiered via Yahoo! Music on February 26, 2008 and was released to iTunes on March 4, 2008. The single failed to chart. On April 2, 2008 the music video for “Paralyze” was released, again via Yahoo! Music and the single was released to iTunes on April 8, 2008.^[40]

On April 7, 2009 the “I Love U Remixes” EP was released to digital music retailers.

Book

On December 2, 2008, Tequila released a self-help book, Hooking Up with Tila Tequila: A Guide to Love, Fame, Happiness, Success, and Being the Life of the Party (ISBN 9781439101537). She herself has said of the book: “After all these years, there are so many fan questions, and I always have given little spurts of advice, but I always sensed that everyone wanted more. I can’t just write a blog on it, because it would be the size of a book… So I decided, ‘Why don’t I put it all together?’. That way they can keep it as memorabilia and go back to it whenever they need help and hopefully inspire them”.

Personal life

Tequila graduated from Alief Hastings High School in 2000. She has cited the violent adolescence she had in Texas as her reason for becoming a model and moving to California in 2001. In March 2003, she revealed that she has taken some college classes but does not have a degree, stating, “I knew out of high school I didn’t want to go to college. I knew that whatever I did wouldn’t have anything to do with college. The only reason I wanted to go was to further educate myself. Right now, I’m still interested in taking classes, but only to educate myself with subjects I like, like history or English. What I didn’t want to do was go to college for an actual degree because there’s nothing out there I like besides doing something that involves the entertainment industry.”

In June 2007, Tequila bought a loft in New York City for herself.

Throughout 2008, Tequila confirmed that she had maintained friendships with Courtenay Semel, Billy Corgan, and Meghan McCain.

On September 6, 2009, Tequila was allegedly choked and restrained by former boyfriend Shawne Merriman, who was later arrested. She was allegedly intoxicated at the time of the incident, though Tequila denies these claims, citing an allergy to alcohol, though her allergy has been disputed. San Diego district attorney Bonnie Dumanis decided not to charge Merriman after her office spent three days reviewing reports from the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. On November 17, 2009, Tequila filed a lawsuit against Merriman for $1.5 million.

On December 9, 2009, Tequila stated she was engaged to heiress Casey Johnson and was photographed with a diamond ring. On January 4, 2010, Johnson, who had long suffered from diabetes, was found dead. On February 4, 2010, the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office announced that “Casey Johnson died from complications related to her diabetes. The Johnson & Johnson heiress died of diabetic ketoacidosis, a life-threatening condition caused by a lack of insulin and high blood sugar, chief coroner Ed Winter said. ‘She wasn’t taking her insulin. She wasn’t taking good care of herself,’ he said. The cause of death has been ruled natural, and a full autopsy report will be completed in two weeks, Winter said.” Tequila has arranged plans to seek legal custody of Casey Johnson’s adopted daughter, Ava.

On December 20, 2009, Tequila announced she was currently having a surrogate pregnancy for her brother.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jessica Faye Carter is an award-winning author and columnist. Her company, Nette Media develops social media technologies for women and multicultural communities, and she blogs at Technicultr.

Women have firmly established their presence on the social web, and account for the majority of users on many popular social media sites. But what does this mean for the future of women in social media?

One word: Opportunity.

Companies looking to reach women — whether as consumers, entrepreneurs, employees, or advocates — have an unprecedented opportunity through social media to engage them. For women, social media presents abundant opportunities to lead, effect change, innovate, and build relationships across sectors, locally, nationally, and globally.

Clicks & Mortar

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Many companies are searching for the perfect blend of online and offline strategies, and their forays into social media are impacting their interactions with women in important ways.

“Businesses are going where their customers are, in an effort to reach them in their environment,” said Rashmi Sinha, CEO and co-founder of SlideShare. “[They] are also starting to share content and join in the conversation in the same way that individuals do.”

Conversations between companies and female consumers are moving beyond “what do you want?” types of questions. Companies are starting to use social media to secure real-time feedback from women on products, services, and marketing campaigns—sometimes before they go to market.

Unilever used social media to launch their new Pond’s Age Miracle moisturizer in China, recruiting bloggers to try the product and share their findings. The strategy was risky because of the heavy usage of social media there, but it came with a huge upside: If the bloggers liked the product, word of mouth could lead to major success. If not, the poor publicity from blogs would make the launch difficult to salvage. The risk paid off and the moisturizer was a hit, leading to the adoption of social media strategies by other Unilever offices in Asia.

Kmart’s Smart Shoppers Unite is a different style of interaction with consumers. It’s a promising community with a mix of deals, shopping advice, and lifestyle discussions. Features include tips from The Frugalista, a popular bargain-shopping blogger, a coupon section, and games. What’s interesting about this network is that it’s interest-based — anyone interested in budget-conscious shopping can join. As the number of female social media users increases, and notions of women’s interests expand, we are likely to see more of these interest-based types of sites.

Built-In Participation

These participative structures are important because they help gather data about women’s activities and interests on the social web. With the significant amount of stereotyping that occurs around women’s interests — particularly assumptions that limit women’s interests to fashion, celebrities, and motherhood — collected data on women’s Internet behavior can give companies a better idea of how to develop communities that can garner maximum participation from women.

Mission: Relationships

“Human beings have always gotten together, collaborated through their church groups and PTAs, told stories over coffee or over the backyard fence,” said Quihuis. “Social media merely allows us to do what we’ve always done faster, better and with scale… From a persuasive standpoint, social media can be used to surface engagement opportunities and increase participation through building new social norms.”

In other words, social media can increase the visibility of opportunities to engage, and influences actions so that the visibility of the engagement acts as a catalyst for increased involvement. We’ve seen evidence of this type of engagement with the recent catastrophe in Haiti. Quihuis noted, “When individuals see all their friends texting money to Haiti, they’re persuaded to do so as well.”

In addition to overcoming hindrances to action, social tools help people to connect across cultural, social, and other barriers to interaction. For women in business, this is especially good news, as they often confront difficulties in securing capital, gaining access to key decision-makers, and finding opportunities to demonstrate their expertise. The “flattening” effect of social technologies allows women to develop relationships with people previously out of reach, and they can demonstrate their expertise using blogs, webinars, and other social tools.

The Mobile Web

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A significant opportunity exists for companies to connect with women using mobile technologies. Women comprise 47% of current mobile web users, and between 2008 and 2009, the number of women using the mobile web increased by 43%, compared with a 26% increase in the number of men.

Joyce Kim, CEO of Soompi.com, a Korean pop and Asian music and entertainment community, understands the need for a comprehensive mobile strategy. “Accessing content via mobile devices is getting both more popular and easier across the Internet,” said Kim. “Also, a good percentage of our traffic originates in Asia where mobile usage is more widespread.”

In addition to mobilizing their sites, companies are moving towards making women’s lives easier, according to Corvida Raven, a technology blogger () and social media consultant.

“We’ll start seeing more apps catering to the lifestyles of women on a personal level, such as shopping apps that provide discounts on popular items that women usually buy for their homes and kids,” Raven predicted. She added that some apps are upping the convenience factor: “Location-based apps are partnering with stores to provide discounts and deals through augmented reality.”

Companies targeting mobile women should also consider developing or sponsoring apps which cater to a broad array of women’s interests, including careers, politics, personal finance, and organization, in addition to the more traditional categories of shopping, fashion, and parenting.

Thought Leadership

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Opportunities are abundant for women to demonstrate thought leadership in the world of social media.

“I believe that now is a golden time for women in technology,” said Gina Trapani, an award-winning author, blogger and programmer. “It’s a time when an awareness of the need for diversity in our field is at its highest. Conference organizers, editors, journalists, and CTO’s are desperate to get knowledgeable women onto their speaker rosters, mastheads, source lists, and staff. There are bigger and better opportunities than ever before.”

Women hoping to seize these opportunities need to be proactive, by submitting workshop proposals that demonstrate knowledge and substantive value. In social media, everyone has an opinion. Conference organizers want to know what research you have done and what expertise you have — why people should listen to you. If you can demonstrate expertise, next steps include networking with conference organizers, speaking regularly at tech events, and publishing.

None of this, of course, provides any guarantee of landing a high-visibility speaking slot. But submitting your proposal to a conference that actively seeks women’s participation is a start. Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page, and Jory Des Jardins, co-founders of BlogHer, cite SXSW as just such a conference.

“For years, Hugh [Forrest, Event Director for SXSW] has recruited the help of women as personal and professional advisors -— us included!” they said. “Elisa sits on his advisory board, and SXSW has grown as a result.”  O’Reilly Media, host to some of the most influential technology conferences in the world, recently released a statement on conference diversity, and crowdsourced a diverse group for feedback and ideas as part of its development process.

Crowdsourcing is also useful for improving the representation of women speakers and attendees. Stone, Page, and Jardins encourage conference organizers to be proactive and to “recruit women to support every part of your event — from recruiting speakers to planning marketing, web sites and wifi.”

But not all conferences are women-friendly. At some, sexualized images of women are still included in presentations. Others feature scantily clad women as props or for entertainment. Stone, Page, and Jardins observed that “the organizers of many conferences, especially tech conferences, don’t seem to appreciate that women don’t want to sit through presentations — PowerPoint, video and otherwise — that depict women as porn stars and/or sex objects.”

“It’s hard to believe we even have to spell that out,” they added, “but, trust us, we do.”

While some organizations have yet to get the memo on creating inclusive conferences, and despite the challenges facing women thought leaders and experts, the future still looks bright for women in social media. The number of women programmers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, consultants, community managers, and social media users continues to grow. It’s only a matter of time before these numbers translate into greater visibility and influence in the social space.

Trapani, too, is optimistic: “Ladies, now is not the time to be timid. Step up, take chances, push yourself beyond your comfort zone, use your powers and influence for good, and let your expertise shine.”

What are some other ways that companies can leverage social media to reach women, and how can women use social tools to increase their influence? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments.

More social media resources from Mashable:

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- 10 Musts for Marketing to Women on Facebook
- How the Fashion Industry is Embracing Social Media
- Zen and the Art of Twitter: 4 Tips for Productive Tweeting
- The Tao of Tweeting
- How Social Media Has Changed Us
- 4 Steps for Effective Online Networking

Image courtesy of iStockphoto (), spxChrome, BenLin, jonya, webphotographeer

Article posted at Mashable  at http://mashable.com/2010/02/15/social-media-women/on

Jessica Faye Carter

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