Recently at The Lifted Brow we made a very large mistake.
In renaming our digital magazine Side Eye we did not know of the term’s origins in AAVE until well after it was chosen, the design was laid out and the title ready to go live with our publisher.
However, this is not something we are going to just quietly change and ignore the bigger discussion around. Though we in Australia know “side eye” to mean a long, circumspect side-wards glance, it has other histories and connotations to which we cannot lay claim.
We were hoping in choosing this title to clearly tie it to “The Lifted Brow” — a skeptical view of things, and to make it clear the two were connected publications (brows/eyes; we were pretty pleased with that!).
Though “side eye” has trickled down to us through popular culture on this side of the world to common parlance, we didn’t stop to understand the implications of using it in this way until it was brought to our attention.
We wholly admit to and will correct our mistake.
We are now back to the drawing board on the name for the magazine.
We welcome any commentary from anyone interested in sharing their views on this, either for publication on this website (please specify if you would like this to happen), or in private correspondence with the editors. Please contact us.
We also really need a new name, so any suggestions would be received gratefully.
As always, we welcome and encourage contributions from anyone anywhere in the world.
Sincerely,
The Lifted Brow.