The Magazine – July 2011

Original photograph by mrhayaka // Flickr

Letting the sun shine in…

Summer is at last in full swing, and so are we. We begin July with our feet planted more firmly. Our schedule is coming together, and we are picking up new writers. We’re still tinkering with the site, enabling ratings on posts and comments and a front page that highlights content in a more organized fashion.

June saw a great outpouring of deeply emotive entries. We were pleased and outraged, victorious and shaken, in love and alone. The political sphere mirrored our ups and downs, with a nail-biting lead-up to New York state passing legislation to permit same-sex marriages, followed by a similar passage in Rhode Island.

We’re looking forward to more break-throughs and more soul sharing this summer. Join us!

Featured this July…

Beautiful I’ve heard you refer to me as your amazing girlfriend, and I have to admit I’m afraid of not living up to the hype.		Vogue Italia Understands Plus-Size Pay attention, New York. This is how you do it.
I need a breath of Oxygen When I look at “women’s magazines” I see one message front and center, every time: buy.		Pulling at the Strings My therapist says I need to keep a journal, a documentation of how my days go by so that I have a dependable source to look back to.
Eat Cheap Shit: A revolutionary cook Whenever I want comfort food, whenever I think about wanting comfort food, I grab Tarla Dalal’s recipes from an obscure kitchen drawer.		Preventing the Collapse Of My Mental Health I look at my point-of-view of situations in my life, and I ask myself, “Is it paranoia? Or is it real?”
Being Fired Getting fired, for whatever reason, blows. Blows chunks. The news is like a well-placed punch. It can make you reel for hours and days.		Mother’s Milk I’ve just finished watching an episode of a favorite show; and I’m… sad.

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“I have sex”

Sometimes, all it takes is that simple admission: “I have sex.”

Our government is afraid of our sex lives. Given their way, the Right and the majority of our current Congress would deny our right to fuck.

According to our current government, sex outside marriage and procreation is a sin. Birth control is a sin. Abortion is murder. Any steps taken towards making having sex healthier and safer is a sin. And as America’s number one provider of reproductive health services, Planned Parenthood will bear the brunt of these hurtful ideological attacks. Tens of thousands of women (and men) who have relied on their reproductive health services will suffer.

If there is one thing that we’ve learned from the previous election cycle, it is that our votes matter. Our rights as individuals and citizens are being taken away. Congress has already come for our reproductive freedoms. Now they will come for our right to vote and hold municipal elections.

It’s our time to push back. It’s our time to tell others that we are sexual beings. We do have sex. We can’t punish ourselves — and we can’t punish others — by allowing our government to enact an anti-human agenda.

Charlie Sheen’s Mysogyny

 

The Disposable Woman – NYTimes.com via kwout

…is tolerated as part of a larger cultural misogyny. Anne Holmes, creator of Jezebel, has an excellent opinion piece in the New York Times called The Disposable Woman.

Holmes demonstrates how Charlie Sheen‘s record of lashing out and being abusive toward the women in his life has been tolerated, even affectionately joked about, by the media at large. Part of the problem, she argues, is the sort of women he’s been involved with.

But there’s something else at work here: the seeming imperfection of Mr. Sheen’s numerous accusers. The women are of a type, which is to say, highly unsympathetic. Some are sex workers — pornographic film stars and escorts — whose compliance with churlish conduct is assumed to be part of the deal. (For the record: It is not.)

Holmes goes on to point out how the exploitation and debasement of women has become a normal part of reality TV culture.

Honestly, there are so many great quotes and arguments in this piece, I can’t possibly pull them all.

Read it for yourself at the NYT.

My (Not So) Secret Crush on Hugh Jackman’s Chest/ Jan 2011

Image by Barbara.Doduk via Flickr

I like a man who isn’t afraid of his chest hair.

Okay, so this is not the most forward (make that forward-thinking) thing I will ever say, but it’s true.  I like a man with a sprinkling of short, dark, curly, man-smelly hair on his chest.  My gal-pals and I have exchanged thoughts on this briefly, and they strongly prefer the hairless chest.  In fact, my friend C has mocked me for getting silly at the sight of chest hair peaking from an actor’s shirt (because, you know, God forbid I should acknowledge my weakness in public).

Hugh Jackman is an excellent example.  But then, he is an excellent example, period, no matter what, if anything, is the topic of discussion.

Visually, he can pull off rough and rugged (any and all of the X Men flicks, but especially X Men Origins: Wolverine, where he wears flannel–”Lesbian lingerie”, as (The Delicious) Brian Kinney of QAF puts it (oh, don’t start complaining about the merits, or lack-there-of, of those films; that’s for another, less hormone-crazed, man-hungry post, don’tcha think?)) , refined and flustered (Kate and Leopold, as the delicious Duke of Albany), and daily casual.  If you’re unsure as to which is my favorite, scroll up and re-read the first sentence.

Femme Funnies: Blasted feminists!

Why aren’t you reading Hark! A Vagrant? You should be!

Revolution, by Jennifer Donnelly

Since I mentioned I couldn’t write book reviews, I’ve been doing nothing but writing book reviews. I’m going to crosspost this with another blog. I won’t make that a common thing. Obviously I don’t want my identity catching up with me, but this was too much to resist. Besides, it took me forever to write; I might as well get my bang for my buck.

*

As soon as I saw Revolution, I knew I had to buy it. There’s something haunting about both young women featured on the cover. (Whomever the cover artist was, they did a bang-up job.) Jennifer Donnelly previous YA novel, Northern Lights,  was based on the same real-life events that inspired Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.  Donnelly’s prose prose is very emotional and rich. I had high expectations for Revolution as a result, and the first few pages — hastily glimpsed at the Union Square Barnes and Nobles — didn’t disappoint.

Revolution’s protagonist is a damaged young woman, Andi.  Threatened with expulsion after an uninspired performance at her fancy-pants Brooklyn private school, her absentee father comes home from Paris to take her back there with him. He plans to supervise Andi as she writes her senior thesis, the one thing that stands between her and total scholastic ruin. She plans to write about the (fictional) French guitarist Mahlerbeau, with an emphasis on his connection to contemporary music.

Andi stays her father’s friend, G, in his Parisian loft. G, a historian, asks Andi’s father to investigate an urn he believes might contain the heart of King Louis XVI’s son, Louis Charles.

As Andi explores G’s loft, she finds two treasures: a priceless guitar, and a locked box containing a two-hundred-year-old diary.  The diary belongs to seventeen-year-old Alexandrine Paradis, an actress suddenly thrust into the politics of the revolution and royalty. From the moment Andi starts reading the diary, she feels a deep bond for its author.  The consequences of her find runs deep, and compose most of what is so wonderful about this novel.

Femme Funnies: Wonder Woman has Issues

Quite a while back, I wrote about The State of Wonder Woman as an entity, spurred by yet another costume makeover. One of the sources I quoted said Wonder Woman should just come out as a lesbian already.

I give you video I cannot embed:

Clipped from: video.adultswim.com (share this clip)

[adult swim]‘s Robot Chicken got there first. I believe that’s Lucy Lawless doing her voice–oh, the compounding implications!

Jane, the remake

When I first read Jane Eyre, I was fifteen. I remembering cheering for Bronte’s fiery heroine as she moved from one hot mess to another. Bronte’s wrote Jane as a survivor and a woman of incredible integrity. Her struggles captivated me as a young reader, and still thrill me now.

Last night, I saw Jane at my local bookstore. The cover features the heroine staring into a gray sky, her skirt askance, her long hair blowing in the wind. I didn’t have to read the jacket summary to know that Bronte was involved. At $24, however, Jane wasn’t cheap. I went home and bought the ebook this morning.

This version of Bronte’s classic is set in the present day American northeast. Jane Eyre is now Jane Moore, a struggling college dropout. Lindner begins with the death of Jane’s parents. Impoverished and unable to continue studying, she is forced to join a nanny agency.

The agency places Jane Moore with a girl named Maddy. Maddy is the daughter of the famous Nico Rathburn, an aging and eccentric rockstar just past his prime. Her job takes her to Thornfield, now transformed into a majestic estate in Connecticut. Its broodiness is faithfully similar to the original.

Pretty Little Liars: New Years Fireworks

NOTE: Hard to keep a secret in a photo booth.

Subterfuge reviews ABC Family‘s Pretty Little Liars, complete with actresses too old to be high schoolers. Season 2, episode 1, “Moments Later.”

It’s back, and they started with a bang! Technically, last season ended with a bang, too–Hannah being hit by a car.

Here is what is relevant for our feminist readers:

1) Emily told her father she’s gay.

Her father, who has been on active duty for ages and just returned home a few weeks ago, could be a hard-line military man. He goes in to ask her what’s bothering her, thinking it’s to do with a boy who’s gotten himself into trouble. Because he won’t leave her alone, gotta protect his little girl, he can see that she’s afraid of something… she tells him. He sits down on her bed, clearly shocked, and the scene cuts.

Femme Funnies: The Little Adventures of Penis & Vagina

Some really adorable cartoons to enjoy! Click Read More to see another two.