“Society has a problem with female nudity when it is not …”—Badu pauses to get her words together; she wants this point to be very clear—“… when it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. Then it becomes confusing.”
]]>I will state upfront that I had an ulterior motive for reading this book. I read it for the anal.
Yup, you read that right. Blazing anal. Blazing the Hershey highway. Firing up the backdoor action. Hot poop chute lovin’. Avast me hearties, there be anal in this novel.
[..] But this is easily one of the most boring Blazes I’ve ever read. Even with the anal. Lackluster anal, can you imagine?
Srsly, they should put a sticky at the top of their blog, like Warning: Contents may cause co-worker-startling guffaws, accidental aspiration of beverage, and sympathetic snarkiness.
I’ve learned as much about writing from the Bitches’ book reviews as I have from any instruction book. For example, in this particular post we ponder the potential pitfalls of poor characterization:
There’s a scene where Bryna eats Cocoa Puffs while reading Thoreau, and I’m not sure what that was supposed to say about her, though I hope she brushed her teeth because those things stick to your molars like whoa and damn hell.
If I hadn’t been lured by the promise of extremely questionable anal sex, I wouldn’t have read past the halfway point. This book is just so dull and wooden and the characters are such schmucks, I wouldn’t have cared about their happy ending because I didn’t like either of them. I thought he was a sexist tool wad and she was a judgmental twerp with questionable taste and limited business skills.
But then, there was whatwhat in the butt.
This is just a few lines; read the rest of the post at your own risk. Your sinuses may never forgive you.
Girls get a lot of mixed messages—they are told, “Girl Power!” and what does that mean? It means you wear a T-shirt that says “Girl Power!” but you call each other bitches. You make fun of a girl for being a virgin and you make fun of a girl for having sex. There’s no right place to be.
My friends, we must guard against the hypnotic pied piper Hypocrisy. Let’s wake up and kick its snarky ass. If we want equality, respect, and all that jazz, we can’t wait for someone else to do it first. It begins with us. (I still want a Girl Power t-shirt, though.)
(thanks to lipstick feminists for the quote)
]]>If you have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is to convince yourself that the person is subhuman — and won’t mind the enslavement. The second thing you must do is convince your allies that the person is subhuman so that you have some support. But the third and the unkindest cut of all is to convince that person that he, she, is not quite a first-class citizen. When the complete job has been done, the initiator can go back years later and ask, “Why don’t you people like yourselves more?” You see? It’s been true for women, it’s been true for immigrants, it’s been true for Asians, it’s been true for Spanish-speaking people. So now we have to undo. We know this — and we have to undo these lessons which have been learned by all of us. And so it will be no small matter. But we can undo it. We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.
Maya Angelou, accomplished poet, writer, activist and teacher
]]>Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.
~ Naomi Wolf
Via.
]]>I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Maya Angelou
]]>So all we can say is: KNOCK IT OFF. Knock off buying this shit, and knock off cranking it out. It is tough enough being a lady in this world, Author-friends, without having it hammered into our goddamn heads that we’re STILL supposed to sit tight, shut up, and look pretty. We are NOT HAVING IT. If anybody around here gets to be a werewolf, it’s gonna be US. And we will eat you right up, believe it.
Preach it, sista.
[tags]books, reading, writing[/tags]
]]>Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? “Keep her,” I replied. The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me.~ Anna Quildlen
Photo by Julia Margaret Cameron
This post was inspired by Maureen’s at IslandRoar.
]]>I also bought one of the bag ladies’ all-natural, microwave-heatable pillows, which I applied to my flexible-as-a-two-by-four back muscles immediately upon returning home from the show. Bliss. If you do not see me at all this weekend, it is because this pillow and I have become one with the Universe.
[tags]hand-made, art, textiles, Rat City Rags[/tags]
]]>What I like the least about this photo is that when it was originally published in Glamour, it was hidden away on page 194. It’s had its comeuppance, though, since now it’s plastered all over teh interwebs.
Most of the articles about this are similar to this one, in which a PR exec admits that though the magazine has received a flood of “positive” responses about this image, they don’t think “real women” are going to sell magazines any time soon because consumers “want to see perfection.”
Given how wealthy the advertising industry is, this may be true. It’s certainly true that we shell out big money to be made to feel insecure.
Which came first, the yearning to be perfect or the magazine that sells it? It’s a chicken-and-egg situation, but which one are we? I guess it’s up to us to get uppity and break out of this cage. Don’t you think?
[tags]Lizzie Miller, Glamour Magazine[/tags]
]]>