Tracy Emin

"There is nothing girl about me anymore, its gone. I've always said it is sex that got me out of bed in the morning, sex that keeps me in bed... Now my life is very different, now it's definitely all about the ideas and about being in control of myself, understanding myself a lot more. That's quite interesting, also I'm afraid of that as well. I wonder where it's all going." --Tracey Emin

thanks to Elsa for the link!

Everything I Need to Know

... I learned from the Sunday Times!


Women really ARE "wired" differently from men! (In an article thankfully not written by the abominable Ms. Dowd. )
This caffeine addiction might give you an ulcer but will save your head!

And, as always, Conservatives r dum!!!!!111

On Pretty.

Women and beauty: norms unchanged for millenia.

First, pretty is not beauty. Pretty is beauty's more available distant cousin, who lives in a different part of the country and is for sale at the mall. Pretty is not a virtue like beauty is a virtue; pretty is formulaic, and it means having certain qualities. Pretty is an objective qualifying term much like being a certain height means one is tall or having certain SAT scores means one is smart. But because pretty is not only possible, not only suggested, and is so widely available, on racks, at makeup counters, at gyms, it is one's duty to achieve. One who makes no attempts toward "pretty" operates in a unidentifiable realm existing between genders, outside cultural expectations and norms. And if you are not beautiful, you must attempt to be pretty, not so much because our culture values aesthetics in any way, but more so that our culture demands signals and signs that render things easily classifiable. And because our culture decided very long ago that woman's greatest virtue is the way she appears physically, it venerates those who achieve success in this set of standards, and casts off those who do not. In this set of norms, a woman who learns, often very early in life, when she is still forming perceptions of herself and the world, herself in the world, that she is physically appealing learns that she is not or does not have to be intelligent. Conversely, a woman who learns that she is not pretty knows she must find other ways to make up for this ultimately debilitating shortcoming.

We consider ourselves an evolved, sophisticated society, but the way in which we view women is so archaic and limiting that only forty years ago was any large-scale movement formed to question the set of standards under which women are judged and valued. In 2008, it seems we've regressed as a society. (And this is not an overly pessimistic view-- I hesitate to go too far into the facts of oppressive gender roles for fear of being labeled a "feminist," the most fearsome of all classifications, perhaps on par with "terrorist" when it comes to clearing a room or getting a date.)

The fact remains, at its most basic level, that women are not free, and that men are not free either, because humans that are born female continue to exist in an oppressive and limiting realm which valorizes a single quality above all else, a quality which itself has incredibly narrow standards. This is to say that women must be physically appealing to be valued in our society, and this undoubtedly includes those rare and yet such familiar characteristics ingrained into all of our minds, such as thin frame and fair complexion, coupled with a demure, submissive manner.

When the world operates in this way, venerating "pretty" over "non-pretty" in its limited margin of acceptance, women are unable to live truly full lives, or lives which do not revolve solely around this pursuit. Thus, they are robbed of the experience of being fully human. Meanwhile, men also lose, as they learn to exist in the orbit of this realm, learning to limit their own experience of other, female individuals, based on a very elementary view of physical beauty.

This oppressive notion of the "conventional" view of beauty is more nefarious than has been widely discussed or attacked, and more harmful than can be determined by quantitative surveys or tests, yet threatens the wellbeing of millions of people living all over the world. It is perhaps best described as an epidemic or an outbreak, and is undoubtedly most evident in the heart of the human female, who, unless she is one of eight or so women in the world who fit these ideal standards (and perhaps even if she is), she is made to feel unfit for and unwanted by the world in which she exists.

What It Feels Like For A Girl

First, let's start with numbers:
Four drinks
Seventeen blocks
One ass sheathed in a thin layer of cotton.
There are a million leaves on the ground,
and an infinite sky overhead,
but this night does not belong to me,
it is not mine,
mine is the anxiety aching in my thighs as I walk quickly, faster, back out of this huge night, holding it in my lungs as I'm afraid to breathe, to attract attention, to exist,

I ride off my drunkenness like a mortal sin:
she who indulges asks for it.
I skim down the roads like evil is chasing me:
these roads hold only danger for my type.
Not the poetry of a quiet, clear November night and the songs of the empty streets at midnight.
I cannot not afford to pause and look around for fear of someone noticing, grabbing, forcing.
(In the mirror at the bar, my face appears sharp, dark, red and metal, defining me as all I am, a justification or not for what comes out of my mouth, and I am apologetic for it.)

I get the sense that the world does not want my kind in here,
will make things uncomfortable and difficult until I pay my bill and leave.

My neighborhood appears before me like a prayer: empty, dirty, no one I love is waiting. It is an escape from what I am not allowed to have.

America Hearts Chastity, Teenage Girls' Asses

Apparently these are flying off the shelves at Kmart stores nationwide. The headline of the New York Daily News reads: "Bottom line benefits as girls are hot to trot out chastity-pushing sweats." A more unlikely or nonsensical phrase would be hard to find, and it would've been funnier if they said "hot to trot out of chastity-pushing sweats."

It's nice to know that reinforcing that age-old American institution of restrictive gender roles can still turn a profit in today's floundering economy. Especially because all of our endless and complex national woes can all be traced to one thing: teenage girls having sex. Uncle Sam and God want all those virile young boys to have as much sex as they want, as long as the girls stay out of it and keep their sweats on.

You know, America, I was wrong about you

Young women of America, if you ever find yourselves feeling down about spending thousands of dollars on college and not being able to use that education, just remember that as long as you're willing to take your clothes off, you're guaranteed work and respect.

Sex! Consumerism! Emptiness!

"Assuming that the behavior of many males in patriarchal society is largely shaped by death denial, I often wonder whether women in patriarchy confront their mortality any more successfully and with fewer damaging ecological consequences. The obsession that many American women exhibit regarding the condition of their bodies, specifically with regard to their weight and appearance, suggests that such women have their own fears and resentments about age and death. The Western world's extraordinary 'consumerist' mentality is supported in part by women who are fixated not only on improving their wardrobes and cosmetics, but also on somehow filling up the internal 'void' experienced by so many people in materialistic societies. To be sure, female preoccupation with physical appearance is greatly influenced by the male gaze, but the situation is probably more complex than this. Men are themselves influenced by and seek the approval of the female gaze, particularly of those females whom men consider attractive. Arguably, so many Western men have been obsessed with acquiring wealth and power because these often prove effective in gaining the interest of women whom those men consider desirable. Perhaps by attempting, with markedly little success, to fulfill sexual-romantic fantasies, men and women alike are concealing more disturbing issues about personal identity, life purpose, and mortality."
-Michael Zimmerman, Contesting Earth's Future
(emphasis mine)

It should be no surprise that we're addicting to buying stuff. Zimmerman isn't the first one to suggest that this may be due to a lack of any sort of cultural grounding outside of the capitalist mentality, but his posturing of the argument as a psycho-sexual/ identity dilemma is compelling.
So what's the answer, if we're doomed to unsuccessfully buy our way into a fantasy we don't even really want fulfilled? Well, we could all go out and buy a some Tom Ford products (the ad above is one of the more tame in a series that was released for a Fall 2007 campaign). A more constructive move, and a more existentially and ecologically responsible one, might be to recognize our own obsessions with wealth and power, question their origins and endless futility (i.e. the fact that they're a cultural construct) and tackle head-on Zimmerman's "disturbing issues about personal identity, life purpose and mortality." Admittedly easier said than done, but we've been living the alternative for a while now and we know what that looks like.

Of Fear and Loathing and Luke in Starbucks

First: "The dominant romantic-comedy trend of the past several years—the slovenly hipster and the female straight arrow." The fat guy/ Katherine Heigl complex: indicative of a much larger cultural trend? We would be pissed if women were portrayed as either high-strung or lazy. What's better? What do we want?

What would Joni do?

Sell her her latest album at Starbucks, right next to Nirvana Unplugged, of course!
Yes, seriously. In a way, it sort of justifies Kurt's suicide (if the state of pop music in general hadn't already done so.) Isn't this the kind of com modification that made him put the gun in his mouth in the first place, over 13 years ago? (Welp, that and his heroin addiction.) Something tells me Courtney's legal fees and failure at things in general are behind this. Oh well, it sort of makes sense. Both Starbucks and Nirvana are from Seattle!

I became aware of this quandary of contemporary popular culture over the weekend, when I found myself in the Boston suburb of Belmont, whose downtown consists of a couple banks, three pizza restaurants, a few overpriced jewelry boutiques and a Starbucks. Because I have no desire to wear the same necklace as Jennifer Aniston, but do have a sickening caffeine addiction, we wandered into the local dealer, fully conscious of just how boozshie and loathsome it made us, but not caring enough to forgo our god-given right to those red paper cups.
The Nirvana display was almost too much cultural death to bear, especially as I struggled to get the overpriced coffee down my wretched throat while reading up in Adbusters about all the people, plants and animals that have to die for my right to do so. As I pondered the depressing state of the world in general and wondered whether to off myself or get another $4 latte, a familiar figure entered the chain of coffee stores that is now our nation's secular church. (Even God would admit that Starbucks is more fun than fire and brimstone.) It took a few glances (shameless gawking) to determine that yes, this tall, sharp-dressed and well-coiffed man was in fact the go-to guy for wimpy boyfriend roles and the younger brother of everyone's favorite suicide attemptee. Luke Wilson was mere feet from me and Elissa, and probably wanted to throw us (ok, me) out the window as I couldn't stop looking over to confirm the sighting. I was completely sure it was him because of that squinty-eye thing he does, and the fact that he was wearing a baller leather-jacket and was with a 30-something blonde woman who had the body of a 12 year old.

The moral of the story: whenever the corporate cultural chokehold is getting you down, an actor more famous for his relationships with co-stars than any quality films or talent will show up and distract you with his disheveled good looks, because this is America!

hoLLab@ck

Courtesy Bettmann-Corbis, Newsweek

Feminists say: Blogs aren't working!! Women need to take it to the streets for the right to earn more than men!

Ahem.
The concept of "feminism" is undefinable, as everyone has their different interpretations, but the definition of feminsim as a woman's right to make as much money as men is disgusting, as patriarchal capitalism is ruining the world as I type. Female CEOs are not feminists, they are power-hungry men in skirts. I would hope that feminists would get hip to the fact that there are more important things in the world right now than financial triumph over your damn balding coworkers. That's why the movement died. We should be past that now, but for some reason we're all still looking out for number one as the world is literally falling apart, because of capitalism, the very system feminists are trying to win in. Bullshit.
Bottom line: Capitalist feminism blows because it falls short of achieving anything as it is completely counterintuitive.

Thanks to Els for the article.
(The above is full of unsupported and controversial claims. Good thing no one I don't know reads this.)

Speaking of politics and chicks...this is good

Ratatat RAWKS even silently. Thanks Kate!

Finally, BLOGS R WIERD!!!!11, courtesy of Kelly, hella hyphy&heady queen of NoCal/ vegan*/ foremost literary visionary of our age.


*not true, but the other stuff is. And she is friends with Akron/Family.

Hegemony 101

"Sexuality itself has to some extent been left behind as a form of self expression. Even though it is everywhere on display, it no longer has time to realize itself in human love-relationships It evaporates into the promiscuity of each passing moment, into a multiplicity of more ephemeral forms of contact."
-Jean Baudrillard, America, 1988

In a college town, walking around on Friday and Saturday nights (and Tuesdays, and Wednesdays and Thursdays) really makes a person wonder what it is that people are really looking for, just what that animal part of our psyche is trolling around the streets in search of. There are packs of guys walking around in backwards hats, carefully chosen t-shirts and baggy jeans, looking for some beers and some girls. Then there are the bevies of young women, in heels and tube tops, looking for a place to go and some guys. Occasionally, you'll run in to those who have surpassed this stage of barely veiled sexual frustration, ditched their friends and paired off. Some guy and a girl walk by, clumsily falling all over each other-- the guy hoping he'll get some and the girl hoping he'll give her a reason to.
These girls, whose heavy use of accessories and alcohol on an empty stomach makes them easily identifiable, have become to be known as "biddies" to both older male and female classmates, who have been around the block and know how these things work. And yes, these girls are an easy target. They wear eyeliner, stumble around looking for parties with older guys and act stupid. But one can't criticize the product without blaming the system.
The "system" undeniably promotes the "dumb female" model, the one that makes college girls feel that they need to cater to a stunted male population by assuming the (distorted and restricting) role of the idiot to align themselves with that amalgam of 21st Century American Female (take your pick of the flock of the vapid, bleached, and permanently drunk women that we somehow equate with the ultimate in feminine success). What results is a society so far from honesty that we not only lie to each other, but we are no longer truthful with ourselves. Because of the great division between sexes that popular culture has had no small part in creating and promoting, in 2007, women and men are often so far from recognizing each other as humans that we often view one another more as accessories to the self to be acquired or beings able to be tailored to fit our needs, creatures to be tamed into submission. We're a culture so unsure of what we want or should aspire to that we seek to fill the void with another person, without realizing that this fails to consider the other person, as well as being a completely ineffective means of dealing with a personal and cultural absence of meaning.
And, I hate to have to ask, but where is the derogatory term for the perpetually hungover cro-magnons walking around campus with "take your top off" t-shirts who can be overheard shouting with their brahs about how they can't remember the name of the chick they just banged?

"Perhaps the greatest challenge to thinking women is the challenge to move from the desire for safety and approval to the most 'unfeminine' quality of all- that of intellectual arrogance, the supreme hubris which asserts to itself the right to reorder the world."
- Gerda Lerner

The F Word

It's 2007. No one knows what's up or down anymore. However many years ago humans discovered fire, and then we discovered feminism. Which one was more incendiary, more instrumental in altering the fundamentals of human life is debatable. (Most) men run from it, and plenty of educated women won't associate with it.

Why, in this age of supposed enlightenment, is Feminism such a dirty word?

Language is nothing if not imprecise, which may be the root of the problem here. "Feminism" seems to denote female superiority, and oh good god we can not have that. In actuality, feminism operates under the belief of equality between genders, and while there are obvious things that separate us, we are all human beings and should be treated as such. But say the word "feminist" and men and women alike run for the hills, envisioning copious body hair and overalls, braless manhaters with upper lip fuzz and "The Second Sex" always at hand. After all, Feminists are really what's wrong with this country.
Classification allows for distortion, which all adds up to a convenient way to relegate an ideology and the people that subscribe to it as "other" or "wrong" or "crazy."
The men who are intimidated by the concept and what it stands for, who can't bear the thought of equality between humans due to a inflated/stunted sense of self and masculinity are just casualties of twenty/first century America, and have had all the humanity diluted out of them by the system of mind control we call contemporary culture. They, like many other products of our society, would be laughably inconsequential if they didn't run the damn show.
The women who refuse to acknowledge what's terribly wrong here proudly perpetuate the entire process in "naughty _____" Halloween costumes. Women should wear what they want without fearing assault, but in our world, which exists upon millennia of signs and signifieds that form our perceptions and interpretations, a person is all too capable of turning herself into an object (i.e. less than human) and she will be treated as such.
For some reason, Feminism has become such a loaded word that even the people in whose interest the concept was formed now reject it. So here's an idea: change the name. If Feminism is an unmarketable concept, why not Equalism or Humanism? It seems that right now we're in a cultural lull that refuses to address these issues-- there's a war going on that was sold to the public by a faux cowboy using macho language and cartoonish masculine posturing. Simultaneously, popular culture continues to sink to the lowest common denominator, sacrificing respect for women for an easy dollar. I know InTouch magazine and the rest of the pile of refined Amazon rainforest detailing Jessica Simpson's latest haircut/weight gain/ shoe purchase isn't necessarily demonstrative of our culture, but this is who we give our time, energy and money to?
All I'm suggesting is that we all turn on our bullshit detectors and refuse to let these images and ideals of femininity and masculinity infiltrate our collective conscience. None of us benefit from believing that one half of the human race is less fully human (i.e. capable of rational thought, deserving of respect for their minds, not bodies, etc.), and I'm sick of the culture that happily perpetuates subordinating and antiquated gender roles, producing weak men and the women who cater to them.