Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Save NOLA

Check it out : visit this excellent website, B-Native and buy stuff to support New Orleans artists.

My sis had just said she wanted me to go find her a water meter sun catcher, and lo and behold I stumbled upon B-native. Saves me a trip to the Quarter.

You know, I should really get kick-backs for this sort of thing.

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Saturday, February 17, 2007

This One's For The Whores

As I was traveling last week, I picked up half a dozen magazines to keep me occupied during my 7 solid hours of travel between New Orleans and D.C. I was most disappointed to find that the cover of Newsweek featured a closeup of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears smeared with the title "The Girls Gone Wild Effect." A tagline inside the magazine reads "Paris, Britney, Lindsay & Nicole - They seem to be everywhere and they may not be wearing underwear. Tweens adore them and teens envy them. But are we raising a generation of 'prosti-tots?"

The sick sensation in the pit of my stomach could no longer merely be attributed to the terrible BWI sandwhich I'd eaten. Granted, Newsweek has always been only slightly more reputable than USA Today, but this is a whole new low. And since I've been home, every news station has been running stories talking about Britney being drunk, shaving her head, needing an intervention, etc. These stories infuriate me on a number of levels.

1) This isn't news. It's just not.
The fact that any news outlet would devote a cover, much less five minutes of actual air time is outrageous. This is the job of People, US Weekly, Star etc.

2) The tenor of the commentary seems more than a tad sexist.
I think if I one day I woke up and realized that a) I was married to Kevin Federline b) I'd ruined my vagina giving birth to his spawn and c) I'd just wasted the last two years of my life with him, I would at the very least, go on a month long bender in which I would imbibe anything even vaguely alcholic in the hopes of killing the brain cells that contained the memories of our life together. Honestly, I think the girl is entitled. Let ye who has not made a relationship mistake cast the first stone.

But more importantly, as my momma likes to say "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." That is - does anyone really believe that these 4 girls are the only people in Hollywood getting "trashed" on the weekend? I'm going to go with no. Sure, one could argue that if they continue a hard partying lifestyle in which they constantly drink to excess, they're laying good ground work alcoholism and/or substance abuse. But let's say hypothetically these girls are just doing some partying but haven't yet crossed the substance abuse line - are they really acting significantly differently from their male counterparts? Why is a girl who parties an "alcoholic whore", but if you're guy you're "awesome"? Let's not forget that the "lifestyle" that claimed Anna Nicole Smith, also claimed John Belushi.

That said, there is a 95% chance that this girl will imbibe many beverages tomorrow at Mardi Gras and get herself some shiny beads. I may also make a t-shirt that says "Alcoholic Whore." Just for the record, I will not flash. That is something that only happens on a) Bourbon Street b) by midwestern housewives who are cutting lose. Trust me, you don't want to see those boobs. Locals know you don't flash.

3) I think it's hillarious that every generation thinks they've discovered sex for the first time, and parents act like its a new worry.
Of course, sex is the oldest story in the world.
Probably as soon as someone invented the word for "sex", I'd imagine the word for "whore" was just behind. There's a theory about the male gaze that has been very influential in feminist film and art theory:

The defining characteristic of the male gaze is that the audience is forced to regard the action and characters of a text through the perspective of a heterosexual man; the camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events. The male gaze denies women agency relegating them to the status of objects. The female reader or viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male.

Case in point,
the picture I included at the beginning of this post is entitled Odalisque which is term for an "oriental" prostitute. These Odalisque paintings were very popular in the 19th century - they're the ones you've read about that were kept behind the velvet curtains in a man's study. These sorts of paintings are often the focus of male gaze theory because while they are often great art, it shouldn't be forgotten that they're also high class porn created to be tantalizing (and seriously, look at that woman's back - she's got like 900 vertebrae).

The Newsweek tagline "
They seem to be everywhere and they may not be wearing underwear" followed by posing the question about "a generation of prosti-tots" really made me think about the male gaze theory, that painting, and all those photos floating around the internet of these girls' business. I sincerely believe that your choice of underwear - be it thong, brief, granny panty, or commando -isn't really the "whore" dividing line.

Ladies, I'll wager that 99% of us have gone sans panties at some point for one reason or another. The difference: there was no one to shove a camera in our cooter as we were getting out of a car. I am completely bewildered by the fact that no one in the media seems to object to the fact that somebody is sticking a camera in these girls' respective crotches. Is this not the male gaze in action? Sure they could put on underwear, and that would certainly be more classy, but why the hell are you looking/photographing/and publishing that?

Ditto goes for those Girls Gone Wild videos. I understand that at this point those things are completely staged, but the first videos were of drunk girls flashing at Mardi Gras - their momentary, drunken midwestern stupidity captured on tape and sold -for which they did not give their permission, nor do they receive compensation. I really don't have a problem with porn, or Maxim or any of that shit, but exploiting somebody while they're drunk and unaware, yeah, that bothers me.*

*Except for those idiots in the Borat movie - they chose to get drunk and rant in front of the camera.

4) These girls are not role models.
If your kids' hero is Paris Hilton or Britney Spears, then you are a complete fuck up as a parent. If your kids think being cute and sexy is on par with say curing cancer, you completely failed to instill any worthwhile values in your children. I think that these girls are the dregs of society, especially Paris who, with all the privileges that race and class have afforded her, can think of nothing better to do with her time than be on reality tv, party, and
(as recent videos have revealed) make biggoted and homophobic comments. But as another writer pointed out (and I'd give him credit if I could remember who it was and find his entry) Paris shouldn't apologize for her conduct because she simply doesn't matter. To be outraged at what she says implies that what she says has any meaning in the first place.

Nevertheless, I think girls should feel free to get drunk from time to time, not wear underwear, and slut it up to our little hearts' content. And if she happens to cure cancer, her choice or complete lack of underwear shouldn't negate her contribution to society. Or in the immortal words of Tina Fey in Mean Girls, "You've got to stop calling each other sluts and whores because that makes it "ok" for guys to call you sluts and whores."

In the meantime, I'll eagerly await
the Newsweek cover story "Man-sluts: When will the drinking and whoring stop?"




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Tuesday, February 13, 2007

And Then All Hell Broke Loose

Since my sis makes me get on Facebook, I used it today to join the Hurricane Katrina Relief Network to keep abreast of volunteer opportunites. Surprisingly, lots of people log on to say things like "Get over it," which if you were here and could still see all the work that needs to be done, you would find it unbelievable.

I didn't realize as I was happily surfing the net this morning getting angry about dickwads in Michigan telling us to "move on", that a tornado had torn through my neighborhood during the night destroying blocks around me and killing one person in her FEMA trailer. I didn't know what had happened until I set off for a bike ride.

There are still a couple of friends I haven't heard from and am concerned. Of those that I have heard from, Big N's front window exploded when part of her neighbor's roof flew through it and tore off part of her roof.

As though that weren't scary enough, the power is out for blocks and blocks so there are national gaurdsmen and police stationed one every corner to prevent looting. Their flashing lights are the only lights you can see in this part of the city. As I got out of my last class, hummer after hummer rolled by as did police with sirens wailing.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Derelicte!

My roomie D, who used to be in fashion, has sworn to me that every year somebody does a "Derelicte" show a la Zoolander. For those of you who haven't seen Zoolander or don't have cable, the movie revolves around a fashion show where the models wore trashbags and looked dirty (to spoof the heroine chic look). The Urban Dictionary succintly defines "derelicte" as: a fashion; a way of life inspired by homeless, vagrants, and crack whores.

Well, sure enough Alexandre Herchcovitch has taken up the mantel for this year's derelicte show. And made sure to accompany it with a jaunty, woven hat!

Read the full article from the Go Fug girls.





2006: The Year In Review

Since it is now the 4th day of February, it might seem a bit silly to write my year in review in the manner I did last year (see Jan. 4, 2006 entry). I credit to the delay to being both ill and busy - twin complaints which conspired to prevent me adequate time for life reflection. That and as we all know, I'm lazy.

2006 was interesting to say the least. It entailed living in NOLA post hurricane, and as people continually ask me "How's New Orleans?" I'm torn between saying things are much better (and they are) and pointing out that things are still seriously fucked up. It seemed auspicious that as I drove back into the city from Texas, I heard over the radio how even though it was just the 6th day of the new year, there had already been seven murders in the city.

It find it appropriate that I am now taking a class on the 14th Amendment, which for my non-law readers is the basis for desegregation jurisprudence. I'm not sure I've ever lived anywhere where the legacy of slavery breathes so freely. Somedays, after a report of another murder or crime, you can simply feel the city seething with the fear of the intermittent race war, and yet you can clearly see in the population the results of generations of miscegenation. It's a city where half the population is black, but that has had little effect on the racial make-up of my school faculty or student body. The mayor is black, and despite his "chocolate city" quip, seems to be supported more by the white voters than black. The city is a paradox that only those born to can fully understand.

On the morning that I drove back to New Orleans, my sister saw a coyote lope through the back pasture. I think the coyote is also auspicious, because I cannot help but be reminded of Mark Twain's description in Roughing It:

The coyote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolfskin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck, and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spirtless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is so homely! -so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful.

My favorite English Professor believed that Twain used the coyote as a symbol for America and the West. To me it seems appropriate that it represent New Orleans in its present condition. And Twain, despite disparaging his homely appearance, had respect for the coyote's intelligence:

But if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy it ever so much- especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of himself, and has been brought up to think he knows something about speed. The coyote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his, and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder that will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and worldly ambition....

And all this time the dog is only a short twenty feet behind the coyote, and to save the soul of him he cannot understand why it is that he cannot get perceptibly closer; and he begins to get aggravated, and it makes him madder and madder to see how gently the coyote glides along and never pants or sweats or ceases to smile; and he grows still more and more incensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entire stranger.... and forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the sudden splitting of a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold that dog is solitary and alone in the midst of a vast solitude!


It seems that like the coyote, everytime someone writes New Orleans off, she shakes the dust off her fur and slinks on. It's as though the problems here are so old that they cannot be fixed or even an attempt made at fixing them, they have become part of the species itself, and somehow it has all resulted in a wily and resilient creature who we wish well:

We soon learned to recognize the sharp, vicious bark of the coyote as it came across the murky plain at night to disturb our dreams among the mail sacks; and remembering his forlorn aspect and his hard fortune, made shift to wish him the blessed novelty of a long day's good luck and a limitless larder the morrow.