a thing I wrote for The Rejectionist about J Franz and Edie W -
I have been a bad “fashion blogger” lately because I have been Writing Other Things, one of which is this Thing that I wrote, for Sarah’s blog, about Jonathan Franzen’s horrifying New Yorker piece on Edith Wharton. Here is some of it:
To be honest, I felt hysterical: that Victorian word for the tantrums of unstable estrogen-addled women, but that I know actually describes a rage forcibly contained, the hot burn of the involuntary tears, the snap in your composure when you are told for the millionth time that what you feel or think or say or do does not matter. I thought that complex, nuanced, funny, difficult, despicably lovable characters were the emblem of a good writer, not evidence of the insecure woman thieving our sympathies through sneaky writer-succubus tricks. And yet one hundred and fifty years after Edith Wharton wrote a number of canonical, excellent books, some rich white straight dude gets paid—what does the New Yorker pay for that kind of piece, like ten grand?—gets paid like ten grand to come to the riveting, breathtaking conclusion that she might be human, and maybe even A Writer, like him?
But you can also go read the rest of it at Sarah’s blog if you are so inclined, which is a blog you should be reading anyhow because she rules. Cool!
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tee that sharpied YSL thing I made and can never take off
skirt from urban a billion years ago, whateva
hat also have been wearing it for months, oops
creepers underground, which I also wear constantly
OUTFIT POST OVERLOAD CONTINUES. But seriously: I told y’all I was dressing super chill all week. None of this is even new — see all those links to the times you’ve seen it all before — which I think is probably some sort of NYFW crime. Oops! Plus, how great does my awesomely dirty hallway look? Way too cold and dark for the roof still!
What you can’t see here though is how snazzy I did my nails this week — a dull khaki green with orangey-pink stripes randomly on some of the nails:
aaaaaand the latest permutation of the various shades of blonde-silver-purple-grey of my Mermaid Hair Manic Panic Adventures:
In entirely unrelated material, I leave you with Werner Herzog reading Where’s Waldo, in case you had forgotten this existed or not yet encountered it, as well as…. snowtoro!
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“Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. Because under California statutory law, same-sex couples had all the rights of opposite-sex couples, regardless of their marital status, all parties agree that Proposition 8 had one effect only. It stripped same-sex couples of the ability they previously possessed to obtain from the State, or any other authorized party, an important right — the right to obtain and use the designation of ‘marriage’ to describe their relationships. Nothing more, nothing less. Proposition 8 therefore could not have been enacted to advance California’s interests in childrearing or responsible procreation, for it had no effect on the rights of same-sex couples to raise children or on the procreative practices of other couples. Nor did Proposition 8 have any effect on religious freedom or on parents’ rights to control their children’s eduction; it could not have been enacted to safeguard these liberties. All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation of “marriage,” which symbolizes state legitimization and societal recognition of their committed relationships. Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for “laws of this sort.””
— United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [via Autostraddle]
(via autostraddle)
SASHA FRERE-JONES: MIA SHOULDN'T HAVE APOLOGIZED -
In the lull between Lana-gate and NYFW-death, MIA flipped America off during that big sportsball game the other day and the internet can’t stop talking about it, but thankfully Sasha Frere-Jones already said everything that needs to be said so now we can move on, right? Cool.
The outrage is tiresome and deeply hypocritical, in all the tiresome ways you’ve been tired out by before. M.I.A. was illustrating her line, acting out the attitude of the words: performing. Fine, it may not be legal to flip the bird on television, but that’s simply a remnant of the fifties we haven’t shaken. Unless somebody was handing out Xanax with the foam fingers, Lucas Oil Stadium was ringing with the music of profanities last night. More to the point, television viewers were submitted to ad after ad that likened women—negatively—to sofas, cars, and candy. Mr. Winter didn’t have anything to say about that, so I’d like to raise both of my middle fingers to him and anyone who thinks profanity is somehow more harmful to our children than images of violence and misogyny. (My two sons, fourteen and eleven, thought the Fiat ad was corny, so I guess they will be safe without Mr. Winter’s intervention.) I say we get out of The Pretending To Be Moral game altogether and use the Internet for important things like posting pictures of cats looking at croissants and PDFs of sensitive government documents.
This whole Planned Parenthood/Komen thing keeps irritating me again at random points throughout my day, which is pretty crappy because it’s seriously ruined basically the past seventy two hours of my life in a pretty major way. Right when I think I’ve forgotten it or managed to distract myself, some little part of me flares up in rage again (“But what the FUCK! It’s like they’re TRYING to PROVE that Planned Parenthood is only a baby-killing machine by taking away some of its other super valuable services! And like they only care about curing breast cancer in rich white ladies who will give them more money! What the fuck is humanity COMING TO? This is HORRIBLE!”) I think I physicallycannotstop being pissed off about it, and so instead of writing nine thousand more words on how utterly infuriating this entire situation is, here, instead, are some links!
• Lest we forget, a year ago when that whole defunding debacle happened I wrote a thing about how much and why I love Planned Parenthood, and none of my feelings have changed.
• Salon has a great piece with a good analysis of the Komen Foundation and how it’s actually symptomatic of wider problems with the org:
It’s worth noting that while breast cancer rates are dipping, an October report from the American Cancer Society warned that they are declining more slowly among low-income women, and that “Poor women are now at greater risk for breast cancer death because of less access to screening and better treatments. This continued disparity is impeding real progress against breast cancer.” You know who loses when Komen backs away from Planned Parenthood? Probably not those nice, pink-clad ladies who attend Susan Komen wine-tasting events.
• This post does a great job of explaining the insidious ways in which pro-lifers are not so much anti-abortion as anti women’s freedom and anti-sex in general, which is an excellent point
If pro-life activists really cared about public health and stopping abortion and saving the precious widdle babies, if they were truly pro-life, then they would support policies and scientific advancements that prevent abortion and, you know, actually save lives. They would promote the use of contraceptives, and fight to make them as cheap and accessible as possible…………. They would support financial assistance for women who cannot afford pre and postnatal care. They would support organizations like Planned Parenthood. But they don’t. They virulently oppose all of these things with a vicious, fiery passion because it’s not about the babies and it’s not about health - it’s about the sex and the women who have it.
• The Planned Parenthood Saved My Life tumblr is full of stories from women who received excellent and often life-saving care at their local PP, which is nothing knew but really serves to drive home the point that, you know, it rules?
• Here’s a link where you can donate to PP, or if you aren’t able to donate, you can always actually support them by, you know, utilizing their services — go ahead and book yourself a pap smear or whatevz like, right now, since you’ve probably been putting it off anyhow. You can also add your name to the letter declaring that you still stand with PP, or you can check out the PPAction site for more news and updates and calls to action.
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Lately I’ve been really into weird concepts of something like failed, desperate, self-conscious deliberate performative femininity? Part of this is evidenced by the fact that I’ve been doing my hair in big curls with my kinda-crappy-blonde-dye-job and wearing a ridiculous faux-leopard coat with ripped tights and messy eyeliner, and part of it comes together more in at least 47 different e-mail conversations about books and movies with “unrepentantly fucked up” lady characters that I’ve been having with at least 5 different people of late. Some of these ideas have been written very eloquently by other folks already, and some of it is obvious and some of it is still vague, and all of it is definitely not “complete,” so, like, go at it in the comments, y’all, I wanna know what you’re thinking.
It begins, I think, with my ongoing frustration that when we are presented with male characters (or personas, or even real persons) who are basically bad people with one redeeming quality (still sleeps with a teddy bear, is a brilliant filmmaker) we let that one redeeming quality, you know, redeem them, and are collectively charmed by their fucked-up-ness. But I have a really hard time coming up with similar female examples: all of the ones I can think of we have opted to either lambast or concern-troll instead. And we always need to redeem them. They always need to learn something or be rescued, which we all know is basically the opposite of how the world really works. Kids, I am a hot mess, and almost all of the women I admire and love and am fascinated by are also hot fucking messes, and I so rarely see that represented in a real, nuanced, and fascinating way. To simplify: I am eternally tearing my hair out over the fact that I desperately want more female antiheroes. In books, film, pop culture personas, whatever. And I’ve been seeing this idea come up again and again lately.
As a brief list of some of what I’m referencing: There’s this Lana Del Rey album review, which is kind of the most astute thing I’ve read on her yet, and which hit the nail on the head of my bizarre, obsessive preoccupation with her and her aesthetic — though it condemned her where I obviously am fascinated instead. There was that Marie Calloway brouhaha, and the fantastic response to it all from Kate Zambreno, which also lead to The Rejectionist’s interview with her here. There were a bunch of folks over at Emily Books who managed to somehow misread a lot of lesbian moralism into Eileen Myles’ Inferno, when I thought it was just a book about, like, someone very funny and intelligent and unapologetic, who also lived a life that reminds me an awful lot of my life now. There was Charlize Theron in Young Adult, who would have been way fascinating if not for Diablo Cody’s frustrating insistence on de-nuancing her characters in favor of twee trope-tastic banter. There’s Cat Marnell at XOJane and the no-nonsense-it’s-okay-to-be-human writing at Rookie. Sarah’s and my Rayanne Project (which sort of fizzled out probably partially because I am a little bit too much of a whacked-out womanchild to coordinate and motivate folks to write me things like that, but the stuff that’s up there is still amazeballs!) The Amy-Winehouse-inspired couture collection that Gaultier showed yesterday. Courtney Love, like, in general.
I am really into this, you guys.
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