So in your case, working as a nude dancer makes all the sense in the world. And I think the logical next step is to own the means of production, that is, create a combination strip club and cultural studies foundation, where the neon sign outside says, “XXX Cultural Studies — the XXX productive force of the XXX 21st century.” Tall enough to be seen from the interstate, it would alternately flash, “Naked Girls! Books! Naked Girls! Books!
—
Cary Tennis, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
The point is this: There are no “rules,” only an urging to be the best we all can be. If we get fired up about misogyny and the unrealistic expectations placed on women but then allow comments like, “she’s huuuuge,” doesn’t that make us part of the problem?
— The
Jezebel team cottons on to the fact that slagging off other women’s bodies
does indeed make them part of the problem. Way to go.
[…] a method is not “cruel and unusual” under the Eighth Amendment unless it is administered with “deliberate indifference” to the pain and suffering of the condemned. In short, if the inmate suffers, it’s not because the authorities in charge of executing him meant to have him suffer.
Prada is going public on the stock market. It’s been saying it’s going to go public for millions of years now but they’re Italian so they just got around to actually filing the papers.
— More piss-taking, courtesy of
Jezebel.
I didn’t want a woman who represented me to walk around with botulism in her face or staples in her forehead.
—
Rebecca Traister, on criticism aimed at Hillary Clinton’s wrinkles and lines.
Which makes me think: is criticizing a political candidate’s possible facelift any better than criticizing her lack thereof? Given that Hillary Clinton looks very good for her age (she is sixty; so is my mum, and this is what she looks like; she is a rather good-looking lady who’s simply not gone under the knife), and that I have yet to see the same kind of absurd criticism levelled at any male, it is very hard to see why we should care any way or the other. Argentinians have just elected a presidenta who’s clearly had a lot of work done: should that be taken as indicative of how she will perform politically? I say stop the madness.
to change your ways means changing your individual ways: refusing certain compromises, to start paying your taxes, don’t ask for favors when you are looking for a job, not to cheat when your child is trying to reach admission to university.
— Beppe Severgnini, to the
New York Times, on Italy’s cultural, social and economic paralysis.
The term “shoegazer” originated from these bands’ withdrawn aura onstage. Guitarists, especially, seemed to spend the whole gig staring at the floor. There was a prosaic reason for this: The billowing amorphousness of shoegaze’s guitar sound relied heavily on foot-controlled pedal effects.
We’re on our toes. My sister looks like a balloon that’s been inflated to capacity, and we circle around her, waiting, waiting. Any conversational topic that does not involve the baby and its imminent birth and/or pre-planned infancy and childhood is greeted with stony silence. Well, at least I don’t have to talk about my job, or lack thereof.
I’m really excited and curious about this new person about to burst into our lives and make five where there were four, blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh. And yet this pregnancy has made me realize how much I love my own life, the life I’ve made for myself that is so different from what was expected from me when I was born. I was a gifted child when gifted children did not get any special attention. I sometimes think my precociousness spoiled it for everyone who was born after me, my sister included. Or maybe it didn’t: it was just there, a given, a gift that went unappreciated and faded with time. At any rate, whatever was expected of me I did not deliver. I am not a mother. I am not a wife, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. I am not even a wildly successful woman. I am simply a mildly talented thirtysomething, struggling in an unforgiving job market and learning how to live and love on a daily basis. I may have let everyone down. And still, it doesn’t matter so much anymore. I like what I have become. I like that there is room for improvement. I love improvement.
Let’s hope this baby comes soon. There are so many books I want to read to it, so many drawings we can sit down to, so many fields to run through.
