Eternally Conflicted

The paper did a story a few weeks ago on a student at one of the high schools who won a nationwide contest resulting in the grand prize of an acoustic concert by Mandy Moore for the senior class.

I got to hang out behind the scenes a little as Mandy Moore met student leaders and the winner before the show. After socializing for several minutes, everyone started to do the picture thing. At one point, the students (about 10) asked Moore to do a ‘Thizz Face’ with them.

She asked what a thizz face was. Myself and the reporter did, as well. The students all said it was a way of showing your pride in the San Francisco Bay Area, acting silly and having fun — all in reference to a style of hip-hop (Hyphy) that has its roots in Oakland and is unique to the region. They demo’d it for her and she started posing for pictures with the students doing a thizz face.

I had heard prior to any of this that some of the slang used in Hyphy music references drug and/or alcohol use. According to an urban dictionary website, a thizz face has a connection to ecstasy. But I also understood it to have several meanings, not just the drug reference. Kind of like the word ‘dope‘. For example, “Did you see that shot by Trent Parke? It was dope!” Dope meaning cool.

We used the image as the front page photo, and in it you see a group of students surrounding the star with cameras pointed at them while everyone is making a ‘thizz face’ (making a T with your hands then contorting your face).

The photo itself is not all that compelling, but I thought it did a good job of showing the star interacting with the students in a way many stars would not - with humor and a lighthearted look at life. Plus, a big reason that Moore picked the video that won to begin with was it presented high school as memories that she didn’t get to experience. She was home schooled after the career took off and never attended high school. To me, the photo illustrated her as the carefree high schooler she never was.

We didn’t mention the slang term in the cutline, but some people picked up on the pose anyway, including Moore’s marketing team — they wanted the photo to be pulled from the paper’s website. So did the high school administration, who suspended the students involved for a day and a half. Some of the students had strong records of academic achievement, including at least one who was elected to student body government. The paper took the photo and story down. My managing editor thought about doing a news story or editorial on the whole deal, but by the time he had heard from everybody on the matter, the story was old news.

There is a posting on ratemythizzface.com (which, by the way, illegally uses a cropped version of my photo) as well as a short youtube video of the star making a ‘thizz face’ (to loud applause) upon request during a Q&A session after the show.

Knowing what I know now, I think the newspaper probably should not have run the photo. But a part of me wonders “why not?” I never heard any whispers or snickering that would lead me to believe the kids were trying to “put one over” on the singer. From what I’ve heard, the slang has a wider definition than just the drug reference. If you watch the video, you hear the crowd go crazy when she does it for them, and that’s more than 100 students. Do they all love ecstasy? That’s something like five percent of the high school’s student body.

If you are serving the community and part of the community is the students, and they use slang in certain ways, do we just deny that?

The other side of the coin would be, sure, five percent of the student body sounds like a lot, but according to the 2006 Monitoring the Future Survey, that’s right in line with the lifetime use percentage among high school seniors of ecstasy.

I am conflicted yet again.