Fashion Icon: Upset Toddlers

Patrick Jane x Teresa Lisbon | 5x20 ‘Red Velvet Cupcakes’

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:55:23 -0400

Patrick Jane x Teresa Lisbon | 5x20 ‘Red Velvet Cupcakes’

"Even in a completely private setting, within a marriage – it couldn’t be any more innocuous..."

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 09:38:18 -0400

““Even in a completely private setting, within a marriage – it couldn’t be any more innocuous than the Middleton situation – and yet people are still saying things like: what was she expecting, she’s famous and she’s got breasts, and therefore she’s got to keep them covered up all the time. I do think it’s a rage against women being sexual on their own terms. We’re perfectly fine with women being sexual, as long as they are objects and they’re passive, and we can turn them on, turn them off, download them, delete them, whatever it is. But as soon as it’s women who want to have any kind of exclusionary rights about their intimacy, we hate that. We say, ‘No, we’re going to make a whore out of you’.””

- Creepshots and revenge porn: how paparazzi culture affects women | Culture | The Guardian

Trigger warning: suicide, bullying, slut-shaming, body policing

Kate Middleton you’ve been photographed topless and French magazine Closer has published the...

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 10:53:51 -0400

Kate Middleton you’ve been photographed topless and French magazine Closer has published the pics. It’s so sad BUT honestly Kate — you are too public a figure to go topless.

This, my friends, is stupid. It is many things, actually, but most of all it is stupid. Photographers with telephoto lenses took intrusive pictures of Ms. Middleton and then published them but Ms. Middleton is at fault for being topless. Because when a woman is nude, she steps outside the boundaries of society’s protections and “deserves” what happens to her? Or because a woman who is a public figure does not deserve privacy even in her own home?

But this article argues that Kate Middleton is too famous to go topless. While I agree that her public position makes her an unlikely candidate for nude beaches, the responsibility for this scandal does not like with Ms. Middleton but with the photographers who took her picture and the editor who printed the pictures. Ms. Middleton has, like the rest of us, a right to be naked in our own homes, vacation or permanent. While an “average” woman in America can rightly prosecute the kind of stalkerish behavior that is a stranger taking (naked) pictures without consent, we deny that protection to the famous. Why does being famous strip (no pun intended) celebrities of the right to conduct their private lives in private?

Let's Talk Victoria Beckham!

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 11:53:01 -0400

Did you know Victoria Beckham and Katie Holmes hate each other? They do. No love at all for the pair. It is one of the reasons, other than the timeshare type sales pitch Tom would give David Beckham about Scientology that the two couples stopped hanging out. Well, Victoria Beckham has had her day and her venue for New York Fashion week picked for months and months. She is having her show at the New York Library. Katie Holmes could have picked any day to have her debut fashion show and picked the day and time that Victoria’s show is. Why? She knows the press will want photos of her, and will skip Victoria.

So my co-mod likes to send me links that she knows will annoy me and this definitely fits the bill. So this will be the quick and dirty version.

Victoria Beckham doesn’t give a fuck if the paps show up at her show. She cares if Anna Wintour and the buyers from Selfridges show up.

To imply otherwise is a) stupid b) ignorant and c) another way in which the contributions and opinions of women are devalued. Because all those female editors and womenswear buyers could show up and it wouldn’t matter according to CDAN because the only real validation is the (male) gaze of the paps.

Jodie Foster on Kristen Stewart

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:41:30 -0400

We’ve all seen the headlines at the check-out counter. “Kristen Stewart Caught.” We’ve all thumbed the glossy pages here and there. “Kris and Rob a couple?” We all catch the snaps. “I like that dress. I hate the hair. Cute couple. Bad shoes.” There’s no guilt in acknowledging the human interest in public linens. It’s as old as the hills. Lift up beautiful young people like gods and then pull them down to earth to gaze at their seams. See, they’re just like us. But we seldom consider the childhoods we unknowingly destroy in the process.

I have been an actress since I was 3 years old, 46 years to date. I have no memories of a childhood outside the public eye. I am told people look to me as a success story. Often complete strangers approach me and ask, How have you stayed so normal, so well-adjusted, so private? I usually lie and say, “Just boring I guess.” The truth is, like some curious radioactive mutant, I have invented my own gothic survival tools. I have fashioned rules to control the glaring eyes. Maybe I’ve organized my career choices to allow myself (and the ones I truly love) maximum personal dignity. And, yes, I have neurotically adapted to the gladiator sport of celebrity culture, the cruelty of a life lived as a moving target. In my era, through discipline and force of will, you could still manage to reach for a star-powered career and have the authenticity of a private life. Sure, you’d have to lose your spontaneity in the elaborate architecture. You’d have to learn to submerge beneath the foul air and breathe through a straw. But at least you could stand up and say, I will not willfully participate in my own exploitation. Not anymore. If I were a young actor or actress starting my career today in the new era of social media and its sanctioned hunting season, would I survive? Would I drown myself in drugs, sex, and parties? Would I be lost?

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: if I were a young actor today I would quit before I started. If I had to grow up in this media culture, I don’t think I could survive it emotionally. I would only hope that someone who loved me, really loved me, would put their arm around me and lead me away to safety. Sarah Tobias would never have danced before her rapists in The Accused. Clarice would never have shared the awful screaming of the lambs to Dr. Lecter. Another actress might surely have taken my place, opened her soul to create those characters, surrendered her vulnerabilities. But would she have survived the paparazzi peering into her windows, the online harassment, the public humiliations, without overdosing in a hotel room or sticking her face with needles until she became unrecognizable even to herself?

Acting is all about communicating vulnerability, allowing the truth inside yourself to shine through regardless of whether it looks foolish or shameful. To open and give yourself completely. It is an act of freedom, love, connection. Actors long to be known in the deepest way for their subtleties of character, for their imperfections, their complexities, their instincts, their willingness to fall. The more fearless you are, the more truthful the performance. How can you do that if you know you will be personally judged, skewered, betrayed? If you’re smart, you learn to willfully disassociate, to compartmentalize. Putting your emotions into a safety box definitely comes in handy when the public throws stones. The point is to survive, intact or not, whatever the emotional cost. Actors who become celebrities are supposed to be grateful for the public interest. After all, they’re getting paid. Just to set the record straight, a salary for a given on-screen performance does not include the right to invade anyone’s privacy, to destroy someone’s sense of self.

In 2001 I spent 5 months with Kristen Stewart on the set of Panic Room mostly holed up in a space the size of a Manhattan closet. We talked and laughed for hours, sharing spontaneous mysteries and venting our boredom. I grew to love that kid. She turned 11 during our shoot and on her birthday I organized a mariachi band to serenade her at the taco bar while she blew out her candles. She begrudgingly danced around a sombrero with me but soon rushed off to a basketball game with the grip and electric departments. Her mother and I watched her jump around after the ball, hooting with every team basket. “She doesn’t want to be an actor when she grows up, does she?” I asked. Her mom sighed. “Yes … unfortunately.” We both smiled and shrugged with an ambivalence born from experience. “Can’t you talk her out of it?” I offered. “Oh, I’ve tried. She loves it. She just loves it.” More sighs. We watched her run around the court for a while, both of us silent, each thinking our own thoughts. I was pregnant at the time and found myself daydreaming of the child I might have soon. Would she be just like Kristen? All that beautiful talent and fearlessness … would she jump and dunk and make me so proud?

There’s this image I have of a perfect moment. It comes to me as a square format 8mm home movie with ’70s oversaturated reds and blues, no sound, just a scratchy loop … there’s a little white-haired girl twirling in the surf. She’s singing at the top of her lungs, jumping and spinning around in the cold water, all salty, sandy, full of joy and confidence. She’s unconscious of the camera, of course, in her own world. The camera shakes a little. Perhaps her mom’s laughing behind the lens. Could a child be more loved than in this moment? She’s perfect. She is absolutely perfect.

Cut to: Today … A beautiful young woman strides down the sidewalk alone, head down, hands drawn into fists. She’s walking fast, darting around huge men with black cameras thrusting at her mouth and chest. “Kristen, how do you feel?” “Smile Kris!” “Hey, hey, did you get her?” “I got her. I got her!” The young woman doesn’t cry. Fuck no. She doesn’t look up. She’s learned. She keeps her head down, her shades on, fists in her pockets. Don’t speak. Don’t look. Don’t cry.

My mother had a saying that she doled out after every small injustice, every heartbreak, every moment of abject suffering. “This too shall pass.” God, I hated that phrase. It always seemed so banal and out of touch, like she was telling me my pain was irrelevant. Now it just seems quaint, but oddly true … Eventually this all passes. The public horrors of today eventually blow away. And, yes, you are changed by the awful wake of reckoning they leave behind. You trust less. You calculate your steps. You survive. Hopefully in the process you don’t lose your ability to throw your arms in the air again and spin in wild abandon. That is the ultimate F.U. and—finally—the most beautiful survival tool of all. Don’t let them take that away from you.

shoesforall: vogue: Rihanna in GivenchyVote your favorite Best...

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 11:48:36 -0400

shoesforall:

vogue:

Rihanna in Givenchy

Vote your favorite Best Dressed now.

So wait? Rihanna is up for best dressed for the outfit she wore to HER GRANDMOTHER’S FUNERAL? Does anyone else see anything wrong with this? Anything wrong with judging her on a public platform during an intensely personal moment? I am all for judging celebs on what they wear to the red carpet or even the grocery store but she is dressed for a funeral. It’s bad enough that she is being photographed going to that funeral but to have her outfit held up to public scrutiny as well?

It’s wrong and it makes me think less of Vogue for being part of it.

Let's Talk Jessica Alba

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 13:28:57 -0400

Imagine that this is what you see every time you leave the house. A mob of adults (mostly men) shouting things at you. Now imagine that you are not an adult but a small child. You are only three feet tall, so short you can’t see over the mob of people.

Now imagine that you are four years old and scared and unhappy. You don’t want your picture taken, your mother doesn’t want your picture taken but these adults continue to take your picture, because money can be made off of pictures of you looking unhappy.

And they aren’t just taking pictures of you because you are in the shot with your mom, they are taking pictures specifically of you even if you mom looks away. They are taking pictures of you while you stand there, scared. Imagine that Honor Warren is your child or your niece or you cousin or any child you care about. How would you feel if adults treated your child this way, if they scared your child so badly she cried sometimes? Imagine if they kept taking pictures of her as she cried because they make money off of a child’s misery.

Furthermore, imagine things we can’t show you-things we won’t show you. Imagine that a child you know was in a stroller wearing a skirt and paps were shooting up her skirt so her underwear was visible. My co-mod tells me this is something that paps commonly do to celebrity children, that it is not unique to Honor Warren’s case.

Now imagine if all this was happening to a child you cared about and you couldn’t do anything about it because their mom or dad was famous. And not only famous but “asking for” this kind of attention because they are an actor. Would you smile for the paps as they harassed and terrified your children? Would we accept this behavior in our communities as the price of being rich or famous or well-regarded?

Let's Talk Rihanna! (Again!)

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:14:16 -0400

A Very Sad Rihanna Tweets Pic of Herself Drinking

This post is the very definition of concern trolling. x17’s only concern with Rihanna drinking is the money they could make off her public breakdown. “Oh, poor Rihanna, she’s so unhappy. Maybe she will shave all her hair off and we can sell the pics for six figures.”

Couple of things besides making fun of x17

a) I’m glad that x17 is in a position to decide Rihanna’s emotional state.

b) How many pics of drinking/smoking up has Rihanna tweeted?

c) Because no one drinks after funerals, never.

d) “Because I had to.” This could mean ANYTHING. Literally anything in the entire world. But x17 decides it means that Rihanna has been driven to drink.

Look, death affects people and everyone mourns differently but x17’s “concern” seems more about driving Rihanna to drink than being actually concerned about her (none of their business) alcohol consumption.

Also, while we are on the subject, this narrative of Rihanna as an out of control party girl, as opposed to a young woman who works her ass off, is bullshit. (Six albums since 2005, not to mention all her guest spots. Non-stop touring. Also, not to be inappropriate but Rihanna’s body is clearly one that requires lots of effort. Maybe Rihanna does have a problem with alcohol. I’m not her mom, I don’t know. But why does no one talk about how Rihanna is an on-point professional?)

But she parties on her off nights! (The only twentysomething to do so!) So she is two weeks away from rehab. Enough, already! Has Rihanna ever been visibly intoxicated on stage? Are there complains about her performances? Has she been blowing off her professional obligations? No? Then stop with the bullshit “concern”.

Tune in next week for the next installment in our ongoing feature: “fi:ut continues to be “shrill” about how the gossip blogs treat Rihanna”. Look for our book in 2014!

Let's Talk Blake Lively!

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 11:51:28 -0400

Lively is Red…with Fury

BG scolds Lively for taking pictures of the paps who trail her. Such actions are only productive in the sense that she could post them to instagram. Hahahaha, she is totally over-reacting to strangers who follow her around 24/7. She stood and posed outside GMA because celebs are expected to pose for cameras outside of studios when they are doing an appearance inside. It’s become part of the job. But where BG and I disagree is with the idea that it is part of a celebs job to be followed 24/7. That a women who talks to a pap is scolding and a buzzkill but male celebs routinely punch photographers and those actions are seen as more legitimate than Lively’s action in not wanting to be followed to her next location.

Why is that? Why are we more respectful of a male actor’s efforts to carve out space apart from the paps, to hate and demonstrate against the attention of the pap swarm than we are of female actors? A female actor who covers her face (Megan Fox), talks to a pap attempting to follow her (Lively), or gives the paps the finger (Kristen Stewart) are either considered “sluts” (Fox, Lively) or “bitches” (Stewart, Fox (AGAIN)). But male stars like DiCaprio or Robert Pattinson are considered “serious” or “dedicated artists” and that makes them “uncoperative”. But their attitude to the paps is indicative of their deep love of the craft of acting blah blah blah pretention. But a female star’s attitude to the paps determines whether she is a bitch, a whore or “nice”.

I assume fame is really nice and I think every actor realizes their is a trade-off to be made in being famous. The sheer numbers of people interested in a celeb’s life means that things like their relationships or their families will be of interest to people on a larger scale than if they were an engineer and their lives were interesting only to their families, co-workers and toddler son’s play group. But no one should have to give up their privacy in the way that seems to come with mega-fame.

The obvious example is, of course, the Twilight actors. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson got involved with a project that, at the time, was based on a popular but not widely known YA novel. By the time the movie was released it was a cultural touchstone and they were being followed to the bathroom. Actors don’t “ask” for “excessive attention” (however you define it) by being famous or successful or getting involved in a project that blows up beyond the stratosphere. Being a talented entertainer does not make someone other than human.

To bring this back to Lively, she has every right not to be followed by people against her will and to be concerned about her safety because of the people who follow her constantly. This is serious, whether BG will acknowledge that seriousness or not.

Usually, we here at fi:ut provide links to the posts we blast...

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 11:58:30 -0400

Usually, we here at fi:ut provide links to the posts we blast but, in my opinion, this gossip blog post is so offensive that I can’t bear to link you do it. I’ve included a screen cap, so you can see that it is a real post.

I know Rihanna is one of the most heavily pap’d celebrities in the world. She gets her picture taken on every vacation, at every nightclub and on ever shopping trip. I don’t know if that is right but it is what it is. However, taking pictures of Rihanna outside a family member’s memorial service or taking pictures as Rihanna goes to her grandmother’s funeral and commenting on the clothes she is wearing (as I have seen in other blogs) is a step too far for me. Especially when said blog (not the one pictured here) is using the occasion to snidely insinuate that Rihanna dresses like a whore for non-funeral occassions.

I understand the fascination with celebrity and I certainly share it. This blog is proof of that. But when did we stop thinking of celebs as “famous people” and start thinking of them as “stars”. Stars are not people. They are some completely alien life form who seem to have no feelings, to experience no loss, to want no privacy.

Everyone deserves to be treated as a person, no matter how much the public (via the blogs) want information about them. We don’t deserve that information at the cost of a celebrity’s humanity. No one should make money, as the blogs and paps do, off of the kind of gross invasion of privacy that Rihanna has experienced this week.

Let's Talk Kristen Stewart!

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:39:00 -0400

Kristen Stewart showed up at a friend’s wedding in jeans. This clearly means she is a raging egomaniac. First, for showing up in the first place because seeing as how she is KStew, she is obviously taking attention away from the bride! Second, for wearing jeans to a wedding that gossip sources are SURE was a formal wedding because RO obviously saw the invitation. Third, for not wearing a dress loaned to her by the groom’s sister. How ungrateful! Fourth, for being rich.

Here’s a thought: maybe Stewart’s friend was unclear when she conveyed to Stewart what the appropriate level of dress was. Maybe Stewart’s friend just didn’t care what the level of dress was and Stewart felt under-dressed which is why she attempted to change. Maybe the Zac Posen didn’t fit her. I know all women are the same size, but it does happen that a dress that fits one woman doesn’t fit another. Maybe…maybe…maybe. The point is that I don’t know what happens and neither do the gossip sites. Neither do they care when it gives them the opportunity to paint a picture of Stewart as an ungrateful bitch.

Because that is the narrative around Stewart: she won’t smile, she’s mean to Lagerfeld (gasp!), she dresses in a way that is not gender performative enough for the gossip blogs, she won’t talk about her private life, she flips off paps. Any one of these things would be enough to create the image that KStew is an ungrateful bitch but the fact that she does all of them means that everything she ever does is only going to reinforce the bitch narrative. She could give up acting and go to Haiti to work in an orphanage for sick children and she still would be an ungrateful bitch. The problem is that Kristen Stewart is too famous for the gossip blogs *not* to cover but she acts above her station (ie her “station” as a young, Hollywood “starlet”).

Just as Rihanna acts in a way that gossip blogs disapprove of (too sexual, too frank for a woman) condemning her to a constantly reinforced narrative about her “sluttiness”, Stewart’s perceived lack of gender performativity (too aggressive, doesn’t wear enough dresses, doesn’t smile enough, claims a private sphere for her own) means that she is condemned to a reinforced narrative as a bitch.

Millions of young women, however, respond to Stewart because she has created a space for herself that girls are told they don’t need, that makes them less than desirable. I know nothing about Stewart as a person, but her public persona as someone who insists on boundaries and reinforces those boundaries in her public appearances and conduct is an admirable example for young women and girls.

Too often women are told that it is rude to say “no”, to insist on privacy, to tell another person they are standing too close or asking inappropriate questions. Stewart does those things, in public, with every interview where she refuses to answer questions about her private life, with ever red carpet where she wears sneakers, with her seeming dislike of the paps who shadow her everywhere. Stewart says “no” over and over again. I admire her for that, even if the gossip blogs never will.

Let's Talk Pregnancy!

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 08:49:04 -0400

Actual Headline: Pregnant Megan Fox Flaunts Baby Bump in Bikini in Hawaii

My Version: Pregnant Woman Wears Clothes in Public, No One Cares

Actual Headline: Gisele Bundchen, the highest paid model in the world, shows off her bump in Brazil

My Version: Conventionally Attractive Pregnant Woman Seen in Native Country

There are a couple of things going on in these articles (and countless more like them) that I have wanted to address on this blog for a long time.

A) Pregnant couples don’t owe the public any information about their family.

B) Saying the father knows that the mother is “mom material” is gross. Because, newsflash, a woman doesn’t need the approval of a man to be pregnant and if a couple is pregnant, they obviously consider the other to be “parent material” and there is no need to repeat the point.

C) The article on Gisele actually talks about how she is “hiding” her bump. So maybe it is time to pick one?

D) Except let’s not. Because this whole “flaunting” construction when we are talking about pregnant woman walking in public is so, so offensive. It falls into this false notion that a pregnant woman is “flaunting” her bump because she has fulfilled her highest purpose in this world. It sends the message that a woman’s body’s function is to be seen. Finally, it sends a really stupid message about acceptable female behavior, that being pregnant in public is not acceptable female behavior. My fellow tumblers, this is the dumbest thing ever.

In conclusion, women are allowed to wear the clothes they want, be pregnant and go out in public. All at the same time.

Let's Talk Rihanna!

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:04:00 -0400

The face that launched a thousand bottles! — Chris Brown, Drake in wild club brawl over Rihanna
New York Post, found here

I am having a problem, tumblrverse. This problem is the repeated slut shaming and general grossness with which gossip sites cover Rihanna, specifically with regards to the recent Drake-Brown bar fight.

Because it is clearly her fault that two drunk dudes got into a fight. Because she’s famous, because she wears short shorts, because she drinks, because she wears a bikini, because she clearly owns her sexuality, because because because…

Newsflash: It isn’t a love triangle. Just because she once dated both of them does not mean she is playing them against each other in a bid for attention. Here’s a radical reinterpretation of this narrative: Maybe Drake hates Chris Brown because Brown is a jackass who beats women? I mean, I don’t condone violence but I imagine that there are many a people who know Rihanna (cough the Carter-Knowles cough) who would gladly throw heavy objects at Chris Brown and it has NOTHING to do with a love triangle or some kind of fucked up bid for attention on Rihanna’s part.

Blaming Rihanna is a convient narrative for a media eager to portray women as slutty or only in terms of the men who are in (or were in) their lives. This club fight creates an easy narrative with which to punish Rihanna for her sexuality, ie having more than one romantic partner in her life, having sex before marriage, having the temerity to chose how she interacts with her ex-boyfriends without imput from US Weekly.

I don’t know why Drake and Chris Brown fought. And neither does the NY Post or People Magazine or Lainey. And, furthermore, while they may not like each other for Rihanna-influenced reasons that does not make her responsible for their mutual dislike.

"So why do these publications do so well? After appearing on the cover of US Weekly’s..."

Tue, 15 May 2012 22:22:25 -0400

“So why do these publications do so well? After appearing on the cover of US Weekly’s “Did They or Didn’t They? A Plastic Surgery Guide for Dimwits” issue and battling for a retraction, I learned that the magazine profited $1.4 million from the issue alone (money I felt should be donated to Operation Smile or an equally well-managed charity helping those in need of reconstructive surgery). The concept of ‘Stars Are Just Like Us!” makes us feel connected to lifestyles that can sometime seem out of this world. Yes, celebrities are just like us. They struggle with demons and overcome obstacles and have annoying habits and battle vices. That said, I would be absolutely mortified to discover that some 15-year-old girl in Kansas City read one of these “articles” and decided she wasn’t going to eat for a couple of weeks so she too could “crash diet” and look like Scarlett Johansson. I’m not normally the type to dignify toilet paper rags with a response, but in this case I feel it’s my responsibility to comment. In a way, I’m glad some dummy journalist (and I use the term “journalist” loosely) is banking on my “deflating” so that I can address the issue straight from my healthy heart. For more information on eating disorders and/or treatment options, please visit: http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/”

- Scarlett Johansson: The Skinny

1st - the Prada look I had to leave off the last post. 2nd - The...

Tue, 08 May 2012 22:10:39 -0400

1st - the Prada look I had to leave off the last post.
2nd - The Prada look I would wear if I were going to the Met Ball and could only choose Prada looks that were shown on the runway on models of color and if Prada actually made runway looks in sizes that fit me, who is 5’2” and not thin. Maybe even with those gorgeous tights/socks.

In celebration of Prada being one of the designers honored last...

Tue, 08 May 2012 17:56:40 -0400

In celebration of Prada being one of the designers honored last night at the Met Ball (which I LOVE) I forced myself to look through all her beautiful collections on Style.com and, if you wanted to go to last night’s ball in one of Mrs. Prada’s looks from spring 2000 to resort 2010 that went down the runway on a model visibly of color, here’s all your choices. Every single one. (I think I’m missing one from the last resort collection because of tumblr’s limits, to note.) I used the shitty selection criteria of judging whether a model appeared white by my white USA-ian view. I was inspired to do this because Jourdan Dunn is my favorite model, and as the hype around this year’s met ball got even hype-ier and there were more interviews and laudatory discussions of Prada, I couldn’t help flashing repeatedly to one of Dunn’s accomplishments as a model: being the first black model in this millenium to walk for Prada. An accomplishment for Dunn, and for whatever reason, almost never mentioned in the write-ups and interviews for Prada. Granted, my google skills might suck here, but prada + racial diversity and other combos yielded one article.

Robin Givhan writes on the third page of her very profile of Prada: When she selects her models, Prada typically looks at the face, not the body. She looks for personality and eccentricity, though not always racial diversity. Not always. From 2000 to 2008, the only model identifiably of color was Hye Park. Until Jourdan Dunn. In one of Prada’s 2009 rtw shows she had no models I saw of color. Since then, though, except for resort and pre-fall smaller shows with fewer looks, there are multiple (one time it was FOUR) models of color, like Shu Pei Qin, Rose Cordero and Joan Smalls. Which makes it even weirder to me that no one brings this up. They’d get to pat her on the back for being so liberal! So diverse! 4 out of 46 looks is so much higher than many many shows do. (I’m depressed again.)

Another quote from the Givhan piece: Prada’s work reflects her own struggle with fashion, an ambivalence that many women share—particularly those in positions of power. Her style expresses a high-minded disdain for society’s restrictions and a repudiation of idealized beauty. “Those were the two topics that I realized I was always working on,” Prada says. “I realized my job is to define—well not to define because that’s so pretentious—but to understand: What does it mean? Beauty, today, for a woman?”

Prada’s non-casting of black models for over 8 years was a Big Deal because Prada is highly regarded by critics, other designers, she’s super influential. Also, the clothes are gorgeous. Seriously, I love Prada. Miuccia Prada is absolutely smart, identifies as feminist, extremely talented. And for over 8 years her struggle to understand what beauty means was an all white runway except for Hye Park sometimes. That’s fucked up. And since she seems to have changed and slightly expanded her vision for understanding beauty to booking models of color, it seems like it would be even more worthy of discussion with her. Bringing it up to her.

This isn’t a rant so much as a sad confusion thing. I don’t fucking get why it’s acceptable and unremarkable to send out 69 looks on a runway all worn by thin white women.

"Is there more to this than meets the eye?"

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 10:11:00 -0400

“Is there more to this than meets the eye?”

- Janet Charlton’s Hollywood » Blog Archive » HOW DID ALEC BALDWIN GET SUCH A GOOD LOOKING STALKER?

[content: stalking] Janet Charlton wonders if Alec Baldwin is REALLY being stalked since the woman accused of the crime is actually conventionally attractive, unlike Madonna’s stalker. Because in celebrity gossip land, stalking is scary, but the price we pay for fame and surprising when it happens to someone we don’t think is famous or pretty enough and how does a woman who Janet Charlton thinks is pretty fit in that (utterly flawed BULLSHIT) narrative? It’s so confusing! It must mean something is AFOOT with the facts, not that, you know, Janet Charlton is writing things that diminish and marginalize a real crime that happens to non-famous people all the time, etc etc.

[edit - I should have said presumed cis in reference to the stalker.]

"Getting plastic surgery isn’t necessarily a sign of “deeper issues”, and beautiful people (whether..."

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:14:34 -0400

“Getting plastic surgery isn’t necessarily a sign of “deeper issues”, and beautiful people (whether they were born that way or were surgically enhanced) are allowed to be just as insecure as the rest of us. Moreover, a mother having plastic surgery does not mean her daughter will develop an inferiority complex — and that I can say with absolute certainty.”

- I Have My Mom’s Old Nose, And It’s Not Awkward At All | Styleite

THANK YOU.

"it’s the fact that it’s so focused on Megan Fox, pulling things about her from thin air..."

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:15:02 -0400

“it’s the fact that it’s so focused on Megan Fox, pulling things about her from thin air and speculating far too much on her motives and on her capacity to love her own child.”

- It’s Going to Be Awkward When Megan Fox’s Baby Comes Out With Megan Fox’s Old Nose

I chose a comment rather than linking you to the post, because this is yet another post from Jezebel that makes me really really think less of people who still call Jezebel a woman-friendly place or link to it as such. It’s not just trigger warnings or lack thereof, it’s all of these things, the steady accumulation of body policing and slut shaming and tee hee at Ryan Seacrest’s speculated orientation.

"Yesterday afternoon Matthew McConaughey ran errands in the ‘Bu, but it looks like little Levi..."

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 10:29:21 -0400

“Yesterday afternoon Matthew McConaughey ran errands in the ‘Bu, but it looks like little Levi had no problem with that! We caught the inquisitive tot and his nanny on a nature walk nearby their home, and he seemed utterly enthralled with his surroundings. Okay, maybe he was curious about the cameras too, but he’s definitely not shy at all! P.S. Those are the tiniest laceless Converse we’ve ever seen…so cute! Where was his mama though? It’s not like she has a full time job or anything!”

- Yeah, it’s not like the mom has anything to do besides being a mother! (Also, I LOATHE paparazzi pics of celebrity children when their parents aren’t present.)

This lovely crap piece of sexism comes from X17 online, October 26, 2009. I’m cleaning out my long saved queue and thought I’d share.